Ricerc@Sapienza

The issue regarding how to guarantee peaceful coexistence between different ethnic groups in a multicultural society is becoming central to contemporary public debate. All public institutions are facing the challenges of intercultural integration to avoid that ethnic differences became social inequalities; the primary school, as the first socialization agency, is called to play a central role, because it represents the first moment when immigrant children are socialized to legal and cultural norms of society (Rumbaut, 2005). To promote a fruitful exchange between natives and immigrants, primary schools put in action
several measures, such as balancing the number of Italian and immigrants in the class composition, to have a suitable heterogeneity of cultures within. Many scholars investigate the educational integration of young pupils into the primary school, highlighting the point of view of teachers, school managers, other public/private educative operators, the families of pupils, but few scholars look at the relations the children have each other in class. The class is experienced by pupils as a space for growth, in which they relate their skills and identity, in a continuous exchange with peers (Renati and Zanetti, 2009). This leads to consider the class as a privileged area where observing the interaction processes between Italian and
foreign children. In this paper, we report the results of a study conducted to investigate the study relational dimension between Italian and foreign children in primary schools in Rome. Two primary schools are sampled, one placed in the city center and one placed in roman suburbs, where the social and economic conditions of households are very different. Four classes of third-year have taken part in this study; two classes for each sampled school. Our research group inquired about the interactions the pupils have each other during the afternoon school activities (after the morning school time), when they study together, doing their own homework at school. To represent the network of study relations taken shape among the
pupils, a sociometric test is designed and administered to all of them. Each pupil is asked to name, in order, the classmates she/he chooses to study together. The question is: “Which classmates do you prefer to study with and do homework together?”. The answers given by the children are entered into a sociometric matrix; the Social Network Analysis is used to visualize the class network as a whole and to calculate individual and collective sociometric indices. The results are shown graphically, as networks of functional (not affective) relations. Considering the class as a network of actors, the Social Network Analysis allows us to shape the relational dynamics among the children, committed to studying together, to identify the positions of popularity, isolation, or marginalization of the immigrant pupils.