Immigration, Education and Identity in Italy: Sam: September 8th

Sometimes Mondays don't start off on the right foot, and today was one of those Mondays. I arrived at the Rome Center for our scheduled class at 10 AM, only to learn from Irene and Jasmine that class had been canceled because Manka had a medical emergency.

"Huh?!"

We all had a bit of a scare until Manka sent out a nice email later this afternoon that, yes, she was doing fine and was resting at home. Not to worry. Even while she was supposed to be resting, she had arranged our full week ahead already and gave us directions for our trip to the Refugee Center tomorrow morning.

Today, and really this weekend, was a bit quiet for me. I think spent most of my day finishing up a few readings, sending out a few emails, and revising a final research paper from an earlier program this summer. As I've been revising that paper though, it's given me a new perspective to build upon through my experiences in Italy. The paper I had written with two other research partners focused on upward educational mobility for low-income and first-generation students in Germany, so in now coming to Italy and learning first-hand about many of the challenges that students from immigrant backgrounds face, I've now gained a broader understanding about what sorts of barriers exist for individuals from immigrant backgrounds. For me, the best parts of our program are the visits to meet with different individuals, from schools to NGOs to the government. Already, many of the themes I've heard from each speaker's presentations and the readings have emphasized challenges that many immigrants face--challenges like learning a new language that affects all aspects of daily survival, learning to navigate an entirely system (education, legal immigration, healthcare, etc.) that's stacked up against you, learning to adjust to a new culture that may not accept your own culture, and much more. I have often thought about my own story of immigrating to the US when I was six weeks old, but when you practically spend your whole life growing up in the US, many of the struggles that my parents faced are stories that I remember hearing. But through my experiences here in Rome, I have a greater urge to learn more of the details, and it has taught me even more so to appreciate the sacrifices that my parents made.

As we start our last two weeks of class, I will be especially interested in learning how immigrant children see their opportunities for further education and universities. One of our readings we read discussed the challenges that immigrant children from non-European countries face in accessing higher education and the fact that the number of students from this background has been consistently decreasing since the 1980s. I wonder about the types of programs, both public and private, that exist to encourage and support students who hope to go to university. It will be especially interesting to understand how socioeconomic class and privilege play into this too. Our visit to St. George's School definitely gave me one perspective that will be interesting to gauge with our upcoming visits this week.

To end my post, I've uploaded some photos from our first two weeks here. Enjoy!

On the train to St. George's School...