The relational integration of immigrant teens: the role of informal education

While the issue of cultural diversity in the field of formal education is receiving growing attention from scholars, after-school programs still qualify as under-researched educational contexts, despite the strong role they can play in terms of social integration of both native and immigrant youth. The aims of this paper is to understand how intercultural integration in the field of informal education can be concretely achieved, managed and enacted in two “tipical” research contexts – an Italian Oratorio and a Juvenile Aggregation Centre (CAG) -, characterized by different strategies to deal with ethnic diversity. This qualitative study, carried out through participant observation and in-depth interviews with teens and educators, shows that specific organizational patterns (both in terms of recruiting strategies and educational offer) can lead to very different outcomes in terms of intercultural relations and social cohesion of native and immigrant youth.