Chains of care. Genesis and transformations of social services for young people with a migration background in a northern Italian city

Abstract

This article discusses the care practices and recent transformative trajectories of a welfare program dedicated to minors that was peculiarly born, at the end of the 1990s, under the impulse of some young Moroccan citizens identified as lacking adequate parental references. Based on an ethnography conducted between 2018 and 2022 in a residential facility for minors in northern Italy, the essay delves into the “narrative of origins” of this “comunità” intended for people under the age of 18 and the considerations on its changes offered by interlocutors who have passed through it during the last twenty years. 

In addition to broadening the range of studies on global chains of care stimulated by transnational mobility, often understood according to a single geographical, gender and generational direction, the essay interrogates different perspectives on ideas, aspirations and practices of autonomy, (in)dependence and (il)legitimacy.