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Elementa
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology 
and Empirical Perspectives

2 
(2022) 

1-2

Transitions

Edited by Tommaso Sgarro

First Section

Tommaso Sgarro
Editorial I – Transitions: New and Different Perspectives 9

Tommaso Sgarro
The Human “Historicity” as a Permanent Transition 13 
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría

Luis Roca Jusmet
François Jullien: The Double Transit of Human Life 27

Jordi Riba Miralles
The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis 37

Alessia Franco
For an Epistemology of Transition: Paul B. Preciado, 51 
Psychoanalysis and the Regime of Sexual Difference

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Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives

Second Section

Tommaso Sgarro
Editorial II – Governing Transitions 67

Pierpaolo Limone - Maria Grazia Simone
Becoming Support Teachers at the University of Foggia 71 
During the Pandemic. An Exploratory Survey

Francesca Finestrone
Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion 85 
of Well-being

Gennaro Balzano - Vito Balzano
Educating for Transition in Work Contexts 101

Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace
The Future We Want: The Transition to Adulthood 111 
of Unaccompanied Minors

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The Future We Want: 
The Transition to Adulthood 
of Unaccompanied Minors
Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace
Università degli Studi di Foggia (Italy)

doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elementa-2022-0102-sura
patriziasurace@libero.it

Abstract

The “threefold” transition from adolescence to adulthood of unaccompanied boys and 
girls hides an infinite number of personal stories, expectations, sufferings and hopes. 
These are fundamental elements that must be acknowledged, listened to and valued, 
along a process of integration that, in its deep meaning, also includes that of the “integ-
rity” of the self. The excursus on legal protection and institutional interventions to protect 
“young” migrants is accompanied by a broader reflection on interculturality for a peda-
gogy of encounter.

Keywords: education; interculturality; pedagogy of encounter; transition; unac-
companied minors.

1. Background 

The passage, transitio, from adolescence to adulthood, translates in the case 
of unaccompanied boys and girls into a “triple transition”: from adoles-
cence to adulthood like any human being; as a result of migration with the 
consequent detachment from the context of origin and the need to build 
a new life in a different cultural and social environment; as a consequence 
of overcoming the traumas experienced before, during or after the journey 
(UNICEF & MDM, 2018), with the possible activation of resilience 
factors that generate individual well-being. 

More generally, the theme of adolescent children follows that of the 
guarantees and rights they enjoy until they come of age and the set of 

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Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace

opportunities that the system is able to guarantee in this transitional phase. 
Concomitantly, the theme of the transition to adulthood focuses on the 
complex process of transformation/change that concerns the body and the 
development of sexuality, psychological maturation, with the evolution of 
the areas responsible for regulating emotions and impulses, as well as the 
consolidation of the neural structure of the brain related to the growth of 
adult reasoning capacity (UNICEF, 2017). 

In relation to the social integration of unaccompanied minors, the 
protection profiles have been outlined in the course of a legislative evolu-
tion centred on the vulnerability of minors and on the necessary specific 
forms of protection characterised by protective and promotional measures 
aimed at guaranteeing their full dignity in coherence with the inspiring 
principles of our constitutional system and with the supranational rules 
placed to safeguard the rights of the person (Parrinello, 2020).

The affirmation of the general principle of safeguarding the unac-
companied minor as an evolving person, with the consequent recognition 
of the rights due to the subject in formation 1, is derived from the very 
definition offered by Law no. 47/2017: 

the minor who is not a citizen of Italy or the European Union and who is for 
any reason in the territory of the State or who is otherwise subject to Italian 
jurisdiction, without the assistance and representation of his and her parents 
or other adults legally responsible for him and her under the laws in force in 
the Italian legal system. 2

 1 The ratification of the 1996 Strasbourg European Convention on the Exercise of 
Children’s Rights (Law no. 77/2003), which renders effective the recognition of the rights 
of the child already operated by the 1989 UN Convention of New York, implies the full 
consideration of the growing autonomy of the child linked to the development of his or her 
personality in judicial and administrative practice. With regard to the fundamental princi-
ples of the rights of children and adolescents recognised by the New York Convention, they 
can be summarised as follows: non-discrimination (art. 2); best interests (art. 3); right to 
life; survival and development of the child and adolescent (art. 6); listening to the views of 
the child (art. 12).
 2 Even before the law under comment, known as the Zampa Law, the notion of 
“unaccompanied minor” was first defined in a resolution of the Council of the European 
Union of 26 June 1997 (97/C221/03), on unaccompanied minors who are nationals 
of third countries (“third-country nationals below the age of 18 years who arrive on the 
territory of the Member States unaccompanied by an adult responsible for them by law 
or custom and until such time as an adult responsible for them actually takes custody of 
them”) and, subsequently, outlined in Prime Ministerial Decree no. 535 of 9 December 
1999, art. 1, para.  535, c. 2 (Regulations concerning the duties of the Committee for 
Foreign Minors, pursuant to art. 33, paras. 2 and 2-bis, of Legislative Decree no. 286 of 
25 July 1998), by which it was established that “unaccompanied foreign minor present in 
the territory of the State”, hereinafter referred to as “unaccompanied minor present in the 

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The Future We Want: The Transition to Adulthood of Unaccompanied Minors

The current system for the reception of unaccompanied minors, enriched 
by novella 47/2017 and by the National Integration Plan for Holders of 
International Protection (of October 2017), provides for the collaboration 
of various territorial actors: the local social and health services, the Juvenile 
Court, the tutelary judge at the ordinary Court, the Police Headquarters, 
public educational agencies, schools of all levels, including the provincial 
centres for adult education.

Family foster care is favoured, through the actions of the local 
authorities, as a substitute for placement in a care structure, with specific 
awareness-raising actions addressed to citizens on the issue of foster care. 
With reference to the reception of minors, the novella also amended art. 19 
of Legislative Decree no. 142/2005, establishing a multi-level system that 
establishes governmental first reception facilities  3, SIPROIMI  4 second 
reception facilities and reception facilities in agreement with the munici-
pality where the minor is located. 

Of course, behind this regulatory system lie an infinite number of 
personal stories, expectations, sufferings and hopes. These are fundamental 

territory of the State”, means “a minor who does not have Italian citizenship or citizenship 
of other States of the European Union who, not having applied for asylum, is for any reason 
in the territory of the State without the assistance and representation of his parents or other 
adults legally responsible for him according to the laws in force in the Italian legal system”. 
Next, art. 1, c. 1 (par. l) of Directive no. 2011/95/EU of 13 December 2011 on minimum 
standards for the qualification and status of third country nationals or stateless persons as 
beneficiaries of international protection, for a uniform status for refugees or for persons 
eligible for subsidiary protection, and for the content of the protection granted, which 
defined an “unaccompanied minor” as a minor who arrives on the territory of the Member 
State unaccompanied by an adult responsible for him/her under the law or practice of the 
Member State concerned, and until he/she is effectively taken into the care of such an adult. 
Art. 2, c. 1 (par. e) of Legislative Decree no. 142 of 18 August 2015 (transposing European 
Directives no. 2013/33/EU on the reception of applicants for international protection, and 
no. 2013/32/EU on related procedures) defined as “a foreigner under the age of eighteen 
years, who is, for whatever reason, in the national territory, without legal assistance and 
representation”.
 3 They are facilities specifically intended for minors and established by decree of the 
Minister of the Interior, after consulting the Unified Conference. They are managed by 
the same Ministry, also in agreement with local authorities. In the first reception facilities, 
minors are received for the time strictly necessary to identify them, to ascertain their age 
and to provide them with information on their rights, including the right to apply for inter-
national protection. MSM may remain in first reception facilities for a maximum period of 
30 days and are guaranteed an interview with a developmental psychologist, accompanied if 
necessary by an intercultural mediator.
 4 These are facilities for the reception of MSNAs and holders of international protec-
tion. Upon reaching the age of 18, minors who have applied for international protection 
remain in the facility until the application is finalised.

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Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace

elements that must be recognised, listened to and valued, along a process 
of integration that, in its deepest meaning, also includes that of the “integ-
rity” of the self. The latter presupposes the possibility of a recomposition 
of each individual boy’s or girl’s history, language, and sense of belonging, 
in a dynamic path of change and confrontation, which starts from each 
of them, recognising their origins and guaranteeing their full personal 
identity, without having to deny parts of it in order to be accepted and 
welcomed (Catarci & Macinai, 2015).

If, however, the process of integration 5, in its legal qualification 6, has 
been variously understood as an instrument of adaptation and adjustment 
with substantial acceptance of the host national culture, in the course of 
time and of migration policy choices there has been a shift to a perspective 
of social inclusion 7, which is even more necessary with regard to unac-
companied minors. 

Indeed, the general supranational principle of the best interests of the 
child, proclaimed in art. 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child 
(approved by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 November 1989 

 5 For a sociological reading of the different socio-cultural integration models, please 
refer to the vast specialist literature. In particular, in relation to the assimilation, cultural 
exchange and pluralist model, see, among others, Cesareo, 1998, p. 16. In favour of a 
functionalist model, albeit starting from assimilation and cultural exchange, Rossi, 2011, 
15 ff.
 6 Consider, for example, art. 4-bis, para. 1, of the Programme Report that accom-
panied Legislative Decree no. 286/1998 (the so-called Consolidated Act on Immigration), 
which states that integration is to be understood as that process aimed at promoting the 
coexistence of Italian and foreign citizens, in respect of the values enshrined in the Funda-
mental Charter, with the mutual commitment to participate in the economic, social and 
cultural life of society. The EU Council Document 14615/04 and the European Agenda 
for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals – COM (2011) 455 – also point in the 
same direction. The European Commission itself – Communication from the Commission 
to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee 
and the Committee of the Regions on immigration, integration and employment of 3 June 
2003, COM (2003) – defines integration as a two-way process based on the presence of 
mutual rights and, consequently, obligations for legally resident third-country nationals and 
the host society that offers full participation to the migrant. Similarly, the European Parlia-
ment Resolution on strategies and means for the integration of immigrants in the European 
Union 2006/2056 (INI) qualifies integration as a two-way process that presupposes the 
willingness and responsibility of immigrants to integrate into the host society and, on the 
other hand, of EU citizens to accept and integrate migrants.
 7 In its broadest sense, it represents a process of improving the conditions for partici-
pation in society, particularly for vulnerable persons such as immigrant children, through 
the enhancement of opportunities, access to resources and respect for rights. In implemen-
tation of art. 3 of the Treaty on the European Union, and art. 9 of the Treaty on the Func-
tioning of the European Union, childcare and child support is promoted.

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The Future We Want: The Transition to Adulthood of Unaccompanied Minors

in New York and ratified by Italy with Law no. 176 of 27 May 1991) 8, now 
recognised as an axiom of relevance to the child’s rights, is now recognised 
as an essential element in the integration of unaccompanied minors. The 
Convention on the Rights of the Child, now recognised as an axiom of 
internal constitutional relevance 9, guarantees the fullest possible protection 
for the concrete affective and educational needs of all the minors involved 
in the judicial cases submitted to the judge of merit 10. 

In the framework of the protection of migrant minors, the child’s 
right to an education emphasises a biunivocal inter-national passage: on 
the one hand, the individual child is understood as a unique and unrepeat-
able person in terms of his or her existential, family, cultural and social life; 
on the other hand, this uniqueness must be promoted through education, 
which is an essential instrument of freedom and a source of equal oppor-
tunities for the fulfilment of the affective and pedagogical needs that are 
prodromal to the harmonious psychological, physical and relational devel-
opment of the child 11.

  8 Thus, verbatim: “in all decisions relating to children, whether taken by public 
or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legisla-
tive bodies, the child’s best interests must be a primary consideration”. This provision has 
also been reaffirmed by other legislation and jurisprudence at the international level, to 
the point of becoming a general principle now consolidated within the legal system of 
numerous States (see, most recently, the Council of Europe Guidelines on child-friendly 
justice adopted on 17.11.2010, para. 3, lit. B).
  9 The principle in question is framed as a true general clause that, in the light of 
arts. 2 and 31 of the Constitution, constitutes a parameter for assessing the constitution-
ality of laws (cf. nos. 425/2005 and 341/1990). The legislator also reiterates its value at 
the regulatory level: art. 317-bis of the Civil Code, in fact, establishes that the judge, in 
settling questions concerning the exercise of parental authority over children, must have 
as his sole reference the exclusive interest of the child; similarly, art. 155 of the Civil Code, 
as amended by Law no. 54/2006, provides that the judge who pronounces the personal 
separation of spouses shall adopt measures relating to the offspring with exclusive reference 
to the moral and material interests of the child.
 10 Cass. Civ., sec. I, 16.02.2002, no. 2303. More recently, an important pronounce-
ment emphasised how the recent regulatory interventions on filiation (art. 315-bis of the 
Civil Code; Law no. 219/2012, art. 2, para. 1) place the listening of the child, as also high-
lighted by the new sedes materiae, among the fundamental and general rules through which, 
as the recognition of the listening itself as an absolute right of the child is realised, its supe-
rior interest is pursued, corresponding to its harmonious psychic, physical and relational 
development, to be pursued also through the immediate perception of its opinions on the 
choices that concern it, thus allowing the participation of the child itself in the judgment, 
as a “party in a substantial sense” (Cass. Civ., Sec. I, 05.03.2014, no. 5237 in the same sense 
Cass., sec. U, no. 22238 of 2009).
 11 To the broad and now unambiguous normative definition of unaccompanied 
minors contained in Law no. 47/2017, new and more vigorous safeguard instruments have 

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For our purposes and beyond the multiple protection profiles, art. 13 
of the aforementioned law allows each child, regardless of legal status, to 
be able to benefit from being entrusted to the social services even beyond 
the age of 18 and up to the age of 21, if the Juvenile Court deems that the 
person needs prolonged support for an adequate path of social integra-
tion 12. This applies, a fortiori, to victims of trafficking for whom a specific 
assistance programme is reserved to ensure adequate reception conditions 
and psychological, social, health and legal assistance, providing solutions 
even beyond the age of majority 13. In concrete terms, we grasp the socio-
political and pedagogical aspects.

2. The crossroads: transition and migration project 

Some data will give us a real picture of the juvenile migration phenomenon 
and the relevance of the adolescent group present. According to the report 
of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, 11,227 boys and 315 girls 
were present in Italy as of January 2022, for a total of 11,542, equal to 
97.3% boys and 2.7% girls. The total number of unaccompanied minors 
is broken down by age group as follows: 7,461 (64.6%) aged 17 years; 
2,583 (22.4%) aged 16 years; 909 (7.9%) aged 15 years; 559 (4.8%) aged 
7-14 years; 30 (0.3%) up to 6 years.

The region receiving the largest number of children is Sicily, with 
3,200 (27.7%), followed by Calabria, with 1,278 (11.1%) and Lombardy 

been added. Thus, the absolute prohibition of refoulement; the uniformity of identification 
and age verification procedures; the provision of first assistance and reception facilities dedi-
cated to minors; the establishment of a national information system; greater protections for 
the right to education and health; the right to legal assistance and to be heard in administra-
tive and judicial proceedings; continuous and prolonged support for minors in particularly 
vulnerable conditions (such as victims of trafficking and exploitation); the establishment of 
the list of voluntary guardians. In particular, procedures must be followed to guarantee the 
right of MSM to participate and be heard in proceedings concerning them with the support 
of an intercultural mediator. Of significant importance is art. 9 of Law no. 47/2017, which 
provided for the compilation of the social file, drawn up by the reception facility staff also 
on the basis of the first interview, subsequently transmitted to the social services of the 
destination municipality and to the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Juvenile Court.
 12 In a Circular of the Ministry of the Interior - Department for Civil Liberties and 
Immigration, dated 03.01.2019. the Ministry of the Interior clarified that MSNAs who are 
granted the possibility of continuing the reception and integration process beyond the age 
of majority remain within the SIPROIMI system.
 13 See art. 17 of Law no. 47/2017.

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The Future We Want: The Transition to Adulthood of Unaccompanied Minors

with 1,221 (10.6%). In January 2022, 1,212 minors left the specific 
protection circuit on reaching the age of majority.

The issue of the transition to adulthood and its undeniable 
complexity is significant when it comes to the reception of unaccompa-
nied adolescents. If, therefore, it encompasses the passage from the level 
of cognitive development and emotional experiences – typical of child-
hood  – to a level marked by fully developed cognitive abilities, more 
balanced emotions and adulthood, according to a progression of endoge-
nous factors common to all adolescents (body, brain) 14, on the other hand 
the contexts experienced by the young migrant and structural factors of a 
socio-political and economic nature are equally important and interacting 
on the transitio. 

In fact, conditions such as poverty, war and persecution, condition 
individual development, shape life choices and the related path, becoming 
crucial, for example, to find a job at a very young age or to move away 
from the land of origin in search of safe places. If one adds to this the 
dramatic nature of the journey, being alone in caring for oneself or dealing 
with the many traumas that the journey brings, one understands how 
the migration of unaccompanied minors, like severe adversities (extreme 
poverty, domestic violence, loss of parents, catastrophic events) will also 
produce early transition and adultised behaviour (PAHO, 2005). In the 
specific case, unaccompanied minors will experience the journey as a sort 
of rite of passage (UNICEF & MDM, 2018), their migratory project, 
sometimes forced by the family, will constitute an integral part of identity 
construction (Terres des Hommes, 2017) with the risk of the double loss of 
belonging (of the context of origin and that of destination).

The picture thus represented depicts the substantial “artificiality of 
a distinction between ‘minors’ and ‘adults’” (UNICEF et al., 2019, p. 39) 
since it does not take into account the processual nature of becoming an 
adult, the cultural and social differences that affect this process, the vulner-
abilities specific to adolescent migrants or experiences that “impose” adult 
responsibilities, behaviours and roles. Added to this are the considerable 
difficulties in being considered (and being able to consider themselves) 
fully adult due to insufficient knowledge of the new arrival context and 
an anomalous condition of “quasi-adult”, after the age of eighteen, which 
makes these young people abstractly independent and responsible for their 
actions, but concretely fragile. Acknowledging their being ‘young’, regard-
less of whether they are minors or adults, means understanding the three-

 14 The model referred to is the one developed by the Pan-American Health Organisa-
tion: PAHO, 2005.

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Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace

fold transition they go through 15 by fully understanding their evolutionary 
needs with a view to their empowerment – as reiterated by the UN in its 
Youth Strategy 2030 16. 

Well, starting from the expectations of these boys and girls, from their 
desires with respect to the imagined future, contributes to the construction 
of their existential and identity trajectory. Improving one’s life, studying or 
working, fleeing violence or early marriages, reuniting with family members 
in Europe, building one’s own family (UNICEF et al., 2019), constitute 
the prevailing desires, but the effectiveness of the transition paths to adult-
hood of unaccompanied minors depends on personal “characterising” 
factors (origin, age, gender) and external factors (legal status, school or 
vocational training insertion, relations with the family of origin or with the 
peer group, significant relations with reference adults 17). For many of these 
“young people”, traumas and psychological discomforts may compromise a 
full transition to autonomy 18, but sometimes good practices of prolonged 
reception and social integration allow existential discomforts to be over-
come and identity affirmation to be achieved in the territories of residence.

The importance of listening to and participating with adolescents, 
especially if unaccompanied, is at the heart of the UN Committee on the 
Rights of the Child’s Concluding Observations addressed to Italy in 2019. 
In them, a universalist perspective is adopted in which differences and 
diversity are recognised and enhanced by the opportunity to be taken on in 

 15 Some of the key areas in which this transition takes place are: the legal status 
granted to the child; the possibility of accessing educational and training opportunities; the 
possibility of accessing the labour market; the possibility of achieving housing autonomy 
and the possibility of establishing or maintaining formal and informal relationships. 
 16 https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/18-00080_
UN-Youth-Strategy_Web.pdf.
 17 The first relationships of trust are established with the educators of the reception 
facilities, who contribute to defining a positive model of support and accompaniment to 
adulthood. Educators often represent effective reference points in the lives of minors, even 
after they come of age, and are considered pseudo-parental figures. Building positive bonds 
with reference adults helps to alleviate the confusion linked to the condition of unaccompa-
nied minors and to rebuild the propensity for sociality, redefining a positive connotation to 
adult figures. For further discussion, UNICEF et al., 2019.
 18 The report by UNICEF et al. (2019) recalls how the vulnerability of these boys 
and girls is certainly linked to their individual stories and derives, for example, from the 
experiences of torture, sexual violence and exploitation experienced in Libya and during 
the perilous journey along the Mediterranean route, or from the anger and disappointment 
at having been induced by their parents to leave for Italy, or pushed by deception, as often 
happens to trafficked girls. The violence suffered before leaving, during the journey and 
even in Italy in some cases, leaves serious consequences on the psycho-physical health of the 
boys and girls. Some of the interviews reveal a total lack of trust in themselves and others.

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The Future We Want: The Transition to Adulthood of Unaccompanied Minors

a shared context capable of countering any risk of exclusion. It also reiter-
ates the opportunity to introduce an all-encompassing legislative measure 
that establishes the right of minors to be heard, even beyond the judicial 
context, and to institutionalise the Juvenile Councils 19 in the form of a 
permanent appointment, in order to facilitate their effective involvement 
also in national legislative processes with respect to the issues that concern 
them. Of course, the right to be heard and to participate 20 must necessarily 
be integrated with other fundamental principles, including the best inter-
ests of the child and non-discrimination (O.N.I.A., 2021). 

In the same sense, and specifically in the European sphere, the 
commitment to make children’s rights a concrete reality has been empha-
sised in the current Council of Europe Strategy for the Rights of the Child 
(2016-2021) 21, which has identified the areas in which action should be 
taken to improve the condition of children to ensure: equal opportuni-
ties; participation for all children; combating violence perpetrated against 
children; ensuring child-friendly justice for all children; guaranteeing chil-
dren’s rights in the digital environment.

Another point of reference is the European Guarantee System for 
Vulnerable Children, European Child Guarantee – COM (2021) 1377, 
which supports the Italian government in ensuring that children and adoles-

 19 Among the good practices of inclusive participation, in particular, mention should 
be made of the Consulta desired by the Guarantor Authority for Childhood and Adoles-
cence – in its function of promoting integrated actions aimed at ensuring that children and 
adolescents are listened to and included in decision-making processes, in all the spheres in 
which they find themselves (in the family, at school, in the courts, as well as in the commu-
nities that receive minors) – with which it has also been able to give a voice to unaccompa-
nied foreign minors (MSNA).
 20 In 2018, UNICEF and AGIA signed a two-year memorandum of understanding 
to promote the listening and participation of children and adolescents; to foster their 
authentic participation in the activities promoted by UNICEF and AGIA; and to promote 
and implement information activities on the rights enshrined in the UN Convention with 
regard to MSNAs. The online platform U-Report on the Move made it possible to inves-
tigate young migrants and refugees’ knowledge of their rights as minors and to foster the 
exchange of information on the protection of human rights. The protocol was renewed 
in May 2021, envisaging joint initiatives to ensure the full effectiveness of the rights of 
children and adolescents living in Italy, with particular reference to the most vulnerable, 
such as migrants and refugees, as well as to guarantee their participation in the processes 
that concern them, also thanks to the online platform U-Report Italia, aimed at involving 
adolescents and young people in Italy (14-30 years old).
 21 Council of Europe (2016); Council of Europe Strategy for the Rights of the Child 
(2016-2021). Also available at: https://edoc.coe.int/en/children-s-rights/7207-council-
of-europe-strategy-for-the-rights-of-the-child-2016-2021.html. Adopted in 2016 and 
implemented in subsequent years. The two implementation reports of the Strategy were 
published in October 2017 and May 2020, respectively.

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cents in Italy have access to care, protection, shelter and decent housing, 
through a detailed analysis of policies and measures related to child poverty 
and social inequalities, the production of a specific action plan, as well 
as the testing and evaluation of operational models for some of the most 
vulnerable groups. In fact, in the European panorama, Italian children and 
adolescents are among those most at risk of poverty and social exclusion: 
30.6% against an EU average of 23.4%. Children coming from a migra-
tory background are particularly exposed to the risk of poverty or social 
exclusion and lack of access to basic services in all five areas covered by the 
Child Guarantee (health, education, childcare, housing and nutrition) 22.

The principles highlighted so far are transfused in the Fifth National 
Plan for Childhood and Adolescence, which promotes the rights of 
children and adolescents through a participative 23, cooperative and soli-
darity-based approach. It was developed around three key words: formal 
and non-formal education, as an essential tool to guarantee well-being, 
psychological and physical, and development, right from birth, in synergy 
between public and private; equity as a principle to fight absolute poverty, 
foster social inclusion and guarantee equal access to technology, as well as 
a strategy to involve, develop and protect conscious and active young citi-
zens; empowerment for the management of social and health systems with 
respect to conditions of vulnerability and for the planning and evaluation 
of public policies in the sector. 

Actions concerning policies for equity include ensuring full imple-
mentation of the legislation on the reception of MSNA (Law no. 47/2017) 
by monitoring its implementation, strengthening the system of voluntary 
protection and promoting family-based reception, accompanying them 
even after they come of age and adopting legislative measures to improve 
the determination of statelessness. In the field of education policies, among 
others, the school context is emphasised as a place of health promotion, 
based on a broader value of the school institution, including policies for a 
healthy school, in relation to the physical and social environment of schools 
and links with the entire educational community. The available data show 

 22 In Italy, the experimentation phase of the Child Guarantee is being implemented 
under the coordination of a national steering committee composed of the Ministry of 
Labour and Social Policies (DG Lotta alla povertà e programmazione sociale and DG 
Immigrazione e olitiche di integrazione), the Department for Family Policies under the 
Presidency of the Council of Ministers, UNICEF and the Italian Committee for UNICEF. 
The pilot started in July 2020 and will end in March 2023.
  23 Dipofam and Istituto degli Innocenti (2021), Rights, priorities for action and the 
pandemic: The views of girls and boys. Available at: https://famiglia.governo.it/media/2349/
rapporto-artecipazione-onia.pdf.

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that it is essential to increase the focus on prevention and intervention 
policies in the area of mental health. The pandemic has also accelerated 
the process of awareness and change: in a well-known research study 24, it 
emerged that during the Covid-19 emergency, adolescents demonstrated 
an enormous capacity for resilience and adaptation to the changes and new 
demands dictated by the measures to contain the epidemic, and that is 
why adolescents are calling for a return to a ‘new’ normality that takes into 
account their needs, their thinking, and their vision of the future.

To the leaders we want to say: we are confident that you are working to build 
a better, fairer and more sustainable future! But we ask you, please, not to 
exclude us from decision-making processes and not to leave us behind! We 
are the future of every society, the actors of the present and we want our 
voices to be heard. Right now. (UNICEF, 2020, p. 85)

In terms of empowerment policies, it is emphasised that children, boys 
and girls are equal partners with adults. Their involvement enables them to 
gain a different, often divergent point of view on facts, which contributes 
to the evolution of society’s thinking. Participation is thus not only a right 
that the world of adults must recognise for children and young people, 
but must increasingly become a daily practice, a consolidated action, a 
constraint in the planning of governance. 

As far as good practices are concerned, beyond a few experiences in 
identified geographical areas (UNICEF et al., 2019), the one implemented 
by the Juvenile Court of Reggio Calabria with the Freed by Football Project 
can be considered good practice, in implementation of art.  13, c.  2, of 
Law no. 47/2017 on the administrative continuation of the social integra-
tion pathway until the age of 21. Together with a number of institutions 
and UNICEF, minors coming from contexts of socio-familiar depriva-
tion (unaccompanied foreign minors, marginalised minors or, in general, 
victims of educational poverty) were offered to play football for free in a 
much broader circuit of socio-pedagogical inclusion. In this experimental 
path, beyond the ‘legal origin’ of each boy, the young people participated, 

 24 Beginning in May 2020, UNICEF, in collaboration with other national and local 
partners, conducted a focus group with adolescents aged 15 to 19 years resident throughout 
the country, both Italian and non-Italian, representing different realities with the aim of 
outlining, through a participatory process, the impact of the pandemic on young people 
and proposals for a post-Covid-19 future. The result was the first survey on the pandemic 
with questions drawn up directly by the adolescents and administered in June to their peers 
through the dissemination on social networks of the programme partners: Agevolando, 
Arciragazzi, Care Leavers Network, Caritas Italiana, CNCA, Scuola Zoo, United World 
College (UWC), U-Report, JA Italia, YoUnicef.

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Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace

in parallel with the game, in an educational path centred on the culture 
of fair play, of respect for the rules for proper inclusion in civil society, 
starting precisely from football practice. Concrete life opportunities also 
passed through the possibility of undertaking or continuing studies (or 
entering the world of work) thanks to the granting of scholarships and 
work bursaries provided for the most deserving (Surace, 2021). As already 
found in the regions under research, also for the young people of interest 
of the specialised court in Reggio Calabria the scholarship or, mainly, the 
work scholarship, were instruments of economic support and work place-
ment in “protected” conditions, offering at the same time a qualified expe-
rience and greater awareness of the Italian regulatory context in view of 
more stable work relations, also through apprenticeship contracts. To date, 
these young people, who are now of age, have gained housing and working 
autonomy by maintaining a relationship of trust with educators, guardians 
and operators who have remained reference persons in their growth path.

3. Interculture, dialogue and reciprocity

I travelled to cultivate myself and grew up too fast, finding myself a teenager 
on the road to maturity. Today, I always travel the same roads, those of the 
awareness of the joy of belonging to a people. Proud to be African. (Diabate 
& Visitilli, 2019, pp. 27-28)

This is the story of Kader, once an unaccompanied minor. This is the “age 
of rights”, to use Bobbio’s words (2005), the historical era of the recog-
nition of human rights that, today more than ever, can defend us from 
dehumanising fundamentalist drifts. To ensure, however, the concretisa-
tion of concepts such as citizenship and democratic coexistence, within the 
broader framework of inclusive migration policies, it is necessary to move 
from multiculturality to interculturality, that is, to proceed “from multi-
cultural coexistence to cultural coexistence” (Elia, 2017, p. 11), promoting 
the transformation of the foreigner, even more so if he or she is a minor 
or an adult “young person”, into a citizen of the host country through the 
sharing of rights, cultures and values.

In the time of globalisation, not only economic, but also cultural, 
linguistic and social, diversity becomes a resource, an opportunity for equal 
confrontation, respect for the identity to which each person belongs. The 
pedagogical specificity of interculturality, which “expressly rejects the static 
nature and hierarchisation of cultures” (Portera, 2014, p. 124), unfolds 
in the dialogue between people who refer to different cultural and value 
systems, favouring learning processes capable of enabling knowledge of 

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other cultures through openness, availability and understanding of differ-
ences, read according to a dynamic concept of culture that emphasises its 
value, relational, socio-environmental and communication characteristics. 

Intercultural education, as an expression of the exercise of solidarity, 
becomes, especially in the school context, the promotion of listening to 
differences and proactive participation in the educating community. The 
intentional objective of dialogue and cultural confrontation requires, as a 
precondition, a relational symmetry and thus the possibility of expressing 
individual subjectivity (starting from the needs, needs, interests and rights) 
in a condition of equality (between migrants and non-migrants) according 
to a cultural pluralism in which diversity and reciprocity are common 
values that respond to the aims of social justice and equal opportunities, 
regardless of the history and origins of each (Fiorucci, 2019). In other 
words, the subject experiences difference as a resource, overcoming stereo-
types and prejudices about otherness, in favour of the constitutive I-other 
relationship, far from the binary or dichotomous logic of identity/differ-
ence, in order to become “multiple” through the transformative power of 
the relationship (Gallelli, 2016, p. 153). 

Intercultural strategies avoid separating individuals into autonomous and 
impermeable cultural worlds, promoting instead confrontation, dialogue 
and even mutual transformation, in order to make coexistence possible and 
address, with the tools of pedagogy, the conflicts that may arise. (Fiorucci et 
al., 2017, p. 618)

In the same way, borrowing Freire’s anthropological-ethical vision of 
educational action (Freire, 1971) and his teleological horizon towards a 
path of humanising restitution that offers children a “being more”, we can 
affirm that the role of dialogue-listening to diversity, as a confrontation 
and horizon of self-consciousness and awareness of others, always implies 
an educational commitment capable of “‘dilating’ the boundaries of the 
world, grasping its ethnic plurality, of ‘enlarging’ the social reality of the 
human being and orienting it towards the acquisition of cultural ‘great-
ness’, which is indispensable for accepting the formative value of coopera-
tion for the creation of a planetary citizenship, halfway between individual 
freedom and solidaristic sociality” (Annacontini & De Serio, 2019, p. III).

An intercultural pedagogy, therefore, which is a pedagogy of 
encounter, which “confronts a co-presence of culturalities always in the 
process of becoming” in which, that is, the aspect “of the plural, of the 
many others and of the between worlds” is present as an element that char-
acterises each individual and the communities to which he or she belongs 
(Cima, 2017, p. 129). Proposing to growing children, especially if they are 

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unaccompanied adolescents or young adults, positive welcoming experi-
ences, in the fullness of the word that is “medicine” (Dolci, 1974, p. 182), 
means “training the heart and recognising in life what counts to build 
personal and common existence” (Mortati, 2019, p. 171). 

Although this vision may appear utopian or illusory in the era of hate 
education (Tramma & Brambilla, 2019, p. 95) of the “liquid post-moder-
nity” (Bauman, 2003), it is certain that the construction of an intercul-
tural educational pathway, in a projectual perspective of growth and social 
integration, is a precise task of a historicized and critical pedagogy that 
knows how to analyse the migration phenomenon, even more so towards 
unaccompanied adolescents or “young people”, with “a proactive utopia”, 
that is, able to look beyond, to the future, and to look before, anticipating 
situations and planning appropriate actions (Schiedi, 2017, p. 25). 

What is envisaged is therefore a “dialectic of identity” (Cambi, 2002, 
p. 11), between the social and the individual, the singular and the plural, 
which is an “inhabiting” of the encounter space, known and shared, as the 
means and end of interculturalism in which “the encounter and welcome 
of all, solidarity and fraternity are elements that make our civilisation truly 
human” 25.

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Riassunto

Il “triplice” passaggio dall’adolescenza all’età adulta dei ragazzi e delle ragazze non ac-
compagnati nasconde un’infinità di storie personali, aspettative, sofferenze e speranze. 
Sono elementi fondamentali che vanno riconosciuti, ascoltati e valorizzati, lungo un 
processo di integrazione che, nel suo significato profondo, comprende anche quello di 
“integrità” del sé. L’excursus sulla tutela giuridica e sugli interventi istituzionali a prote-
zione dei “giovani” migranti è accompagnato da una riflessione più ampia sull’intercul-
turalità per una pedagogia dell’incontro.

Copyright (©) 2022 Giuseppina Maria Patrizia Surace 
Editorial format and graphical layout: copyright (©) LED Edizioni Universitarie

 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 
 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to cite this paper:
Surace, G. M. P. (2022). The future we want: The transition to adulthood of unaccompanied 
minors. Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives, 
2(1-2), 111-126. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2022-0102-sura

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	_Hlk98273750
	Elementa_2-2022-1-2_00b_Sommario.pdf
	First Section
	Editorial I
	Transitions:
New and Different Perspectives

	The Human “Historicity”
as a Permanent Transition
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría
	François Jullien: The Double Transit
of Human Life
	The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis
	For an Epistemology of Transition:
Paul B. Preciado, Psychoanalysis
and the Regime of Sexual Difference

	Second Section
	Editorial II
	Governing Transitions

	Becoming Support Teachers
at the University of Foggia
During the Pandemic *
	Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion of Well-being
	Educating for Transition in Work Contexts
	The Future We Want:
The Transition to Adulthood
of Unaccompanied Minors
	An Exploratory Survey


	Sommario.pdf
	First Section
	Editorial I
	Transitions:
New and Different Perspectives

	The Human “Historicity”
as a Permanent Transition
in the Philosophy of Ignacio Ellacuría
	François Jullien: The Double Transit
of Human Life
	The Event, beyond the Permanent Crisis
	For an Epistemology of Transition:
Paul B. Preciado, Psychoanalysis
and the Regime of Sexual Difference

	Second Section
	Editorial II
	Governing Transitions

	Becoming Support Teachers
at the University of Foggia
During the Pandemic *
	Music: For a Sustainable Community and the Promotion of Well-being
	Educating for Transition in Work Contexts
	The Future We Want:
The Transition to Adulthood
of Unaccompanied Minors
	An Exploratory Survey





