Exploring the space of conviviality with newcomers and host communities

Abstract

This paper explores the space of conviviality between newcomers and host communities exemplifying the author's way as a researcher to be at the same time an activist in Italy. The author investigates her position as an adult educator and researcher to focus on how the informal process of research on adult education has a 'transformative' effect at the meso (social) level dimension of interaction. Group experience is life experience and food is one of the most powerful connective tools humans have: it stimulates all of the senses, evokes deep memories and connects one with the wider system of interaction and complexity. In this meso-level dimension newcomers and native citizens interconnected their senses through sharing food. The paper includes different languages and styles: autoethnographic field notes of informal conversations between migrants and Italians involved in the research, transcriptions of dialogues and correspondence with research participants and photos taken during the field of research. All texts and images are analyzed to imagine new forms of embodied research in adult education.

“You can see it in his eyes that he is willing to work”. The ambivalent use of work in promoting integration for migrants. A case study from Northern Italy

“…According to Gregory Bateson (1972), living in a place is a relational, compositional, and ongoing process, so the experience of refugees and asylum-seekers unfolds in relation to the physical and social space, in daily interactions with others, and with the public discourse (Formenti & Luraschi, 2020. All refugees and asylum-seekers are part of a larger network generated through the interaction and the movements with others and the environment (Luraschi, 2021). We investigate the paths of asylum-seekers and refugees hosted in residential units: Silvia is in the field while Andrea is a member of the research team supervising the epistemological and methodological aspects of the project, and we combine a range of qualitative methods (auto/biographic, cooperative, and ethnographic).…”