The creation of laws regarding the linguistic integration of migrants has contributed to the change in Italian language teaching, which has had to adapt its materials and methodology to migrants. However, the specific case of refugees has not been specifically assessed, with the exception of experimentation with the Council of Europe toolkit for refugees. This paper aimed to study the linguistic integration of adult refugees in Italy by conducting an ethnography through participant observation and semi-structured interviews between Italian language teachers and refugees. The results of this work show both the teachers’ perceptions of the refugees’ linguistic integration and the refugees’ perceptions of linguistic integration practice. The conclusions highlight the need for more hours of Italian language courses as well as lessons based on specific integration needs. Moreover, this study emphasizes that the integration practice itself implies language learning. A final consideration is made concerning the current integration situation of refugees in Italy.

Refugees are very different from other kind of immigrants. This is because of their particular migration path which is characterised by forced displacement and painful experiences. In addition, they often suffer from difficult living conditions even in the host country, which adds a weight to the burden of their traumatising experiences. Those events can affect the health of the refugees and consequently their learning process as well. This calls the attention on this particular field of education, which is until now neglected by the literature. The aim of this research is to study how teachers react to the needs of this particular class of learners. To conduct this research, we have used an ethnographic approach, by making in-depth interviews and questionnaires to teachers that work with refugee students in Jordan, one of the countries with the highest presence of refugees in the world. The results of this study include an analysis of the teaching experience of our informants. More specifically, a look on the difficulties encountered by the teachers and their way to cope with them. The analysis shows that teachers from migrant or refugee origin show a better understanding of the problem which sometimes is correlated with a better help to the students. Finally, the impact that this working experience has on teachers is analysed. The conclusion focuses on the need of specialisation in this field, in order to provide a better support to both refugee students and teachers involved in their education.

In these turbulent times of changes and transformations where educational processes are being virtualized due to the pandemic, we must not forget the difficulties that this implies for certain vulnerable learners and some learning contexts. That is the case of the L2 learning by immigrants and refugees. Such learners already have a starting difficulty, both for not mastering the language of learning and for the digital divide, which is increased by the migration variable. This work analyses, within a context of “normality”, the motivation of immigrants and refugees, in the light of their links and expectations. The differences in the relation with the Italian language are shown. The results show that the dependency on the host society, the uncertainty of the future and the absence of family ties are influential factors for refugees learning motivation. On the contrary, immigrants are not subjected to these factors, and therefore their Italian L2 learning motivations are different. By this research we conclude that adult refugees and immigrant students have different attitudes through the residency country language learning.

This study analyses the factors that influence the second language learning motivation of refugees in Italy. To do so, we have conducted an ethnography by making interviews and questionnaires to adult refugee students of the Italian language. The analysis of the data highlights that the peculiar migration experience of this type of students results in specific language learning motivation factors. Starting by the existing paradigm, we discuss the refugee second language (L2) learning motivation as composed by the following dimensions: Ideal L2 Self, Ought-to L2 Self, Social Distance, Learning Experience, Self-confidence, and Anxiety and Multilingual Self.

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