Multilingual Disabled Migrants Transitioning into Adulthood in Italy: Intersectional Possibilities for CRPD Implementation

Abstract

As previous research in the context of primary and secondary schools in Italy demonstrates, intersectional needs of multilingual disabled migrant students are siloed. Similarly, when transitioning into adulthood and independent living, this group of students is pushed into disability or migration/language services, according to the perceived needs or availability of support. As part of the CRPD national implementation process, Italy has recently passed a disability reform legislation, emphasizing the emancipation of disabled people. The main tool established by the reform legislation to overcome the fragmentation of support services is Progetto di Vita Individuale, Personalizzato, Partecipato [Individual, Personalized, Participatory Life Project—IPPLP]. We believe that the implementation of this tool holds the potential to re-frame and re-organize support services available to multilingual disabled migrant youth in intersectional terms. Drawing from the integrated framework of Critical Disability Raciolinguistics, this paper advances understanding of how the IPPLP pushes for innovative practices to train educators and providers in services available to multilingual disabled migrants. For this purpose, we focus on services in the Piedmont region, because of its recent policies on the transition into adulthood of marginalized youth (Delibera Dirigenziale-Administrative Decision, 2024).

1. Introduction

The inclusion of migrants in Western societies has always happened in spite of anti-immigration propaganda and immigration policies tied to racism and ableism (Migliarini, 2018). Migrant bodies (and minds) have long been constructed as dangerous and undesirable (Dolmage, 2018; Giuliani, 2021). Resurfacing far-right ideologies have only made white supremacy, and the war against migrants, more explicit to the general public. These ideologies permeate through all institutions, including schools. Here, they are often implemented via expulsions, suspensions, harassment and disproportionate referrals of multiply marginalized migrant students, living at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression, in special education (S. A. Annamma, 2017; Evans-Winters, 2017; Harry & Klingner, 2006; Morris, 2016).

Italian society and the education system are not immune to these ideological forces, despite the existence of progressive, democratic and inclusive legislations developed since the end of World War II (WWII). The policy of Integrazione Scolastica [School Integration] of 19771 marked the culmination of a radical socio-cultural transformation leading to the abolition of all mental asylums and special schools, and the full integration of disabled people in society and mainstream education. This historically grounded deinstitutionalization process, on one side, and the egalitarian perspective provided by the post-war Constitution, on the other, were a response to years of fascist regime, and they were fueled by a social justice-oriented pedagogical tradition.2 In the 1970s and 1980s, disabled people in Italy began to acquire rights and recognition, despite the resilience of medicalized understandings of disability. Through the medical perspective of disability, disabled people were seen as in need of being “fixed” and entitled to restricted forms of citizenship (Marchisio & Monchietto, 2023; Castel, 2019). While disabled people were considered as second-class citizens, racialized Italians and migrants were, and indeed still are, excluded from the collective imaginary of the Italian national identity (Giuliani & Lombardi-Diop, 2013). Following an increase in the number of migrant children in Italian schools since the 1990s, educational institutions and school professionals began to address issues of cultural and linguistic diversity through the lens of interculturalism (Migliarini, 2017). Similarly to multiculturalism, interculturalism merely celebrates diversity rather than transforming curriculum and pedagogy, centering cultural knowledge of multiply marginalized students (Troyna, 1993). Currently, multilingual migrant youth with and without disabilities live between Italian institutional expectations (i.e., acquiring language proficiency, finding a job, and contributing to the host society), and the quality of language, educational and training services provided (e.g., condensed programs, segregation from Italian youth, inconsistent/insufficient funds; Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022).

In the context of Italy, the concept of youth covers a wide range of age groups, usually including anyone under 40, close to the average age (38 years) at which young people in Italy reach autonomy (Bello & Cuzzocrea, 2018). When the focus is on work, for example in studies on the NEET phenomenon, the age group is defined as between 18 and 32 years (Bonanomi & Rosina, 2022), while in the medical field, the most common definition is that used in oncology, which considers the concept of the adolescent and young adult (AYA) population, defined as patients between 15 and 39 years (Weiss & Harrison, 2024). Literature shows that the definition of youth has to be shaped according to the context of the analysis, considering both sociological and psychological aspects. Moreover, Genova (2018) suggests that the definition of youth is increasingly shaped through shared social practices rather than strictly through age groups. For the purposes of this paper, the term youth is used to refer to people between 16 years (the minimum age at which Italian youngsters are allowed to work) and 25 years, as suggested in Marchini et al. (2021).

Drawing on the integrated framework of Critical Disability Raciolinguistics (Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022), this paper analyzes the implementation of the CRPD through the Delegating Act 227, and the Piedmont regional policy Pensami Indipendente [Think of Me as Independent]. It also focuses on emerging innovative practices that can be used in Piedmont to train educators and service providers via the Individual, Personalized, Participatory Life Project (IPPLP) tool, available also for racialized multilingual disabled migrants. The contribution starts by exploring the background context of social and educational exclusions faced by multiply marginalized students in Italy. This is followed by the presentation of the Critical Disability Raciolinguistics conceptual framework. Subsequently, an overview of the Pensami Indipendente is offered. Then, we analyze new practices for educators and professionals emerging through the IPPLP tool implementation. We conclude by affirming that, despite some tensions, this new legislative framework has the potential to transform services, provisions and pedagogical practices for racialized multilingual migrant youth with disabilities in intersectional terms.

2. Interlocking Systems of Oppression for Multiply Marginalized Youth in Italy

2.1. The Invisibilization of Race

At the end of WWII, Italians made amends for racial laws and concentration camps, overcoming the issue of race and considering the language of fascism obscene (Pes & Deplano, 2014). However, the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement was made up mostly by white Italian people, and consequently considered race as immaterial, irrelevant and inexistent, and refused to reckon with the Italian colonial past. Such evasive dynamics are rearticulated today through migration legislations that police migrant bodies and confine them in the suburbs of big Italian cities, re-establishing de facto new colonial camps (Migliarini & Elder, 2023). Migrant and forced migrant children are then positioned outside of the endeavor of quality education, even within progressive Italian pedagogy (Migliarini, 2017). Furthermore, their inclusion often entails violent forms of integration into monolingual and monocultural education settings (Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022). Multilingual racialized migrant youth with or without disabilities are subjected to a systemic pathologization and racialization, despite their willingness and ability to learn the local language and be part of the society.

White monolingual Italian teachers construct migration, citizenship, undocumentedness, and language learning phenomena as signs of disability for forced migrant students racialized as Black (Migliarini & Stinson, 2021). This means that Italian teachers continue to see multilingualism of racialized migrant youth as a deficit, rather than a skill. Their perception is solidified by racial and disabled categorizations, enshrined in policies such as the 2012 Ministerial Directive on Special Educational Needs. These categorizations supersede any intellectual capacity that is exerted by racialized multilingual migrant youth’s ability to relocate to a foreign country, apply for residence permits, master Italian language, and attempt to learn a trade (Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022).

Discrimination and racism against multilingual migrants in Italy are institutionally operationalized via a line of color that catalogs specific subjects through phenotypic absorbability based on the spectrum of the nation’s color boundaries—that is, whiteness (Cuttitta, 2012). The root of such operationalization can be traced in the national unification process at the end of the 19th century when the racial character of the emerging Italian nation was contested. The Italian phenotype was carved from the internal North/South divide and its growing overseas empire in Africa (Giuliani, 2015). From 1861 to 1914, Italians’ self-identification as white structured the national formation. Whiteness emerged through contrast and relational processes. These processes identified what constituted deviations from the norm to outline implicitly the identity of the self (Nani, 2006; Patriarca, 2010). Through contrast and relational processes, race was modified according to the hegemonic image that served as the general representation of the nation (Lombardi-Diop & Romeo, 2012). Internal and colonial diversity was relegated to racialized otherness, constructed as monstrosity, as absolute deviation from the “norm”. Yet, by occupying the ends of the distribution of the population, diversity became the very element producing “normality” (Giuliani, 2021). Internal and colonial diversity produced the color of the nation, of its sovereign citizens and their racialized privilege (Giuliani, 2015).

Mediterranean racism was a discursive practice common in the first years following the Italian unification in 1861, when the newly formed parliament would contrast the idea that Italians were less white than other Europeans, a widespread belief in Northern Europe (Giuliani & Lombardi-Diop, 2013). Influenced by ideas of Aryanism adopted during the Fascist era, Italian-ness was constructed as an “eroticized” Mediterranean-ness, different yet close to Blackness (Giuliani, 2015). It was during the Fascist era that new and more powerful racial discourses articulated the difference between the brown Italian body and the Black body of the colonies, relegated the Black subject to liminal urban spaces, and consequently excluded them from their rights to be citizens of the Italian nation. Today, this line of color has become a thin and mobile web that contains every aspect of the social and cultural life of the Italian nation.

2.2. Implications for Citizenship Laws and Education

Italian citizenship law, adopted in 1992 and based on the principle of Ius Sanguinis, or citizenship by blood, builds on the above racial understanding. The Ius Sanguinis establishes that Italian citizenship is granted by blood, i.e., if you have at least one Italian parent (Santagati, 2013). The law was subject to several political debates due to its exclusionary jurisdiction, especially towards the progeny of migrant families residing in Italy. In fact, children born from migrant parents can acquire Italian citizenship if they were born in Italy, have had uninterrupted residence until they turn 18 years of age, and have submitted a statement of intent within one year of their 18th birthday. This process is, however, complex and difficult to navigate, and claims are often denied the first time around. As a result, some two million people are excluded from the right. The exclusionary nature of the present citizenship law has a significant impact on the life and educational experience of racialized youth. Despite being born and educated in Italy, they are precluded from voting, becoming teachers, and accessing a variety of jobs and services. Indeed, their freedoms to participate in society are restricted. If inclusive education is to be conceptualized intersectionally, then educational stakeholders should campaign vigorously for substantial reforms of the Italian citizenship law.

Multilingual racialized migrant youth, with or without disabilities, must take on many aspects both in their departure from one country and their entrance into another. They must, in many ways, adopt behaviors and practices that may feel foreign to them in order to become a part of the host country, either to avoid exclusion or to seek acceptance (Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022). Still, the experiences of these migrant youth require consideration for the plurality of values and needs. On the one hand are the needs of the youth and, on the other, those of the receiving nation. An acceptance of plurality and multiplicity from teachers, educators and the general public would aid in concretely understanding racialized multilingual migrant youth. Such understandings can help in the development of holistic and intersectional policies and practices that honor the desires and needs of all participants (e.g., establishing norms, developing structured mentorship opportunities, social exchanges) (Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022). Unfortunately, the continuous neoliberal transformation of the Italian education system, leading to the increase of explicit racist, ableist and classist rhetoric, has made the education of multiply marginalized youth difficult and unequal. Such inequality is particularly evident when comparing the school dropout rate between racialized multilingual migrant and Italian students. A total of 22.5% of racialized migrants youth drop out of school, compared to 11.6% for Italians (INVALSI, 2025).

Inclusion in education happens through a process that I (author 1) have defined as including through SENitizing asylum-seekers and refugee children (Migliarini, 2018). This involves a range of different procedures articulated in the public and school professionals’ discourses, based on positioning subjects as less “able” or different from a predetermined, standardized “norm”. SENitizing is a word play involving the use of the initials SEN, which in most European countries refers to Special Educational Needs. SENitizing describes systems for sorting students into relatively homogenous boxes, while marginalizing those subjects located at the interstices of multiple differences. The underlying motivation for including through SENitizing is to meet the challenge of an increasingly heterogeneous student and social population by institutionalizing the concept of “individual deficit”, and in so doing to reproduce learning as an individual practice, without bringing about educational change in inclusive terms.

2.3. Recent Policy Reforms

In this context, we are cautiously optimistic about the passing of the 2021 disability reform legislation, known as Delegating Act 227.3 This act pushes us to rethink all-inclusive education policies and practices in alignment with person-centered approaches, and particularly the principles enshrined in the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).4 Act 227 is a delegating act, meaning that the Italian parliament delegates the government to draft five decrees to concretely implement its principles. All Italian regional institutions receive the implementing decrees within two years of the passing of the law. The Piedmont region is the first who has reacted to the Delegating Act 227, anticipating the decrees’ entry into force with the creation of the Pensami Indipendente policy. This policy focuses on the transition into adulthood of all multiply marginalized youth, especially their full inclusion in the labor market.

Under the Delegating Act 227, services are asked to explore forms of oppression and discrimination that hinder all multiply marginalized youth from realizing their aspirations and dreams and enjoying their full rights (T. Tarantino, 2024). Regional and local support services have the opportunity to better grasp the nature of interlocking systemic oppressions. They can finally center multiply marginalized youth’s aspiration and career choices, currently hinging on teachers and school professionals’ biased labeling and pathologization processes (Marchisio & Curto, 2022). In turn, multiply marginalized youth are recognized with more agency to plan their lives, and the kinds of support they receive in schools and in post-secondary transition (Marchisio, 2025; Curto, 2025a). Importantly, Delegating Act 227 is set to challenge a welfare system historically characterized by familism, whereby families have been traditionally considered as primary caregivers for disabled people (Bertani, 2013; Pizzo, 2022). In a familistic welfare system, multilingual racialized migrant youth are at a disadvantage, as they do not have enlarged family networks in the host country, and their intergenerational resources are significantly impoverished by the cost of their migration journey (Morad & Sacchetto, 2020; Pathirage & Collyer, 2011; Schuster, 2005). Before looking in detail into the Piedmont Pensami Indipendente policy, and the IPPLP implementation tool, we present the conceptual framework that guides us in this endeavor.

3. Raciolinguistics

This paper draws on the Critical Disability Raciolinguistic (CDR) framework (Cioè-Peña, 2020) to highlight both intersecting and enduring patterns of education inequalities and exclusions for racialized migrant students in disability and special education services, in their own post-secondary transition into adulthood and independent living in Italy. This integrated and critical framework, based on Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) in education and raciolinguistics, offers an understanding of how the overrepresentation of racialized migrants and refugees in SEN and their social disablement happens, even in their post-secondary transition, because of their perceived cultural, and linguistic “disadvantage” (Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022). It exposes racism and ableism within Italian institutions and services, as well as providing a critical intersectional lens to analyze the reform legislation for individual, personalized, participatory life projects.

3.1. DisCrit

Culminating from the limitations of Critical Race Theory and Disability Studies, offering only a single-axis perspective of structural oppressions (S. A. Annamma et al., 2018), DisCrit emerged. It has seven tenets that further elaborate the pathologization of Black, disabled children in schools and society. Tenet 1 focuses on how racism and ableism circulate interdependently, and often in neutralized and invisible ways to uphold the socially constructed idea of the “norm”. Tenet 2 values multidimensional identities and troubles singular notions of identity, such as race, disability, class, gender or sexuality. Tenet 3 emphasizes the social constructions of race and disability and yet recognizes the material and psychological impacts of being labelled as disabled and racialized. Tenet 4 privileges the voices of marginalized populations traditionally not acknowledged in research. Tenet 5 considers legal and historical aspects of disability and race, and how they have been historically used separately to deny the rights of certain citizens. Tenet 6 recognizes whiteness and ability as property, and that gains for disabled and racialized people have been made as a result of interest convergence of power majority groups in society. Tenet 7 requires activism and supports all forms of resistance. The DisCrit framework also serves as a social justice call to action to the field of special education and related education field, because the post-secondary outcomes of racialized migrant students continue to be concerning and inequitable internationally (S. A. Annamma, 2017; Cruz et al., 2021), and in Italy (Curto, 2021). Although DisCrit’s genesis is in the US, it continues to be an important and relevant framework in Europe and Italy to explore intersectional identities in education.

3.2. Critical Disability Raciolinguistics

Drawing on the work of Flores and Rosa (2015), this paper is also informed by raciolinguistic ideologies, which produce racialized speaking subjects who are constructed as linguistically deviant. This is a result of a process that makes certain linguistics practices “normative”, especially those produced by white subjects. A Critical Disability Raciolinguistic (CDR) perspective, already applied to other empirical research (e.g., Migliarini, 2025), extends this framework by integrating the principles of DisCrit. Thus, racialized migrant students with disabilities are seen as having inferior linguistic practice, making them “less worthy” on account of racialization and pathologization (Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022). A CDR perspective shows how race and language interact to classify and ostracize culturally and linguistically diverse people with disabilities. In enacting S. Annamma et al.’s (2013) DisCrit and Flores and Rosa’s (2015) raciolinguistics we are able to understand that race, disability, migration and languages are socially constricted and made to alienate racialized migrant students with or without disabilities (e.g., Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022). Finally, the CDR perspective helps us and the readers to understand if these issues are appropriately dealt with in the Piedmont Pensami Indipendente policy, and the IPPLP implementation tool, addressed in the following sections of this contribution.

4. Post-Secondary Transition in Italy: Pensami Indipendente Policy

The Pathway to Transversal Skills and Orientation (PCTO)5 is a mandatory nationwide program that all students undergo during the last three years of secondary school. The aim of such a program is to offer students placements in different organizations to help them acquire the skills they need to enter the labor market, and to guide them in their career choice. Some scholars and activists criticize the PCTO program for its discriminatory architecture, and its failure to substantially enhance social mobility (Ciccarelli, 2025; Fasanella et al., 2025). Also, the PCTO is very much based on the neoliberal principle of students’ choice for their work placement (Presti et al., 2025). If we analyze it from a CDR perspective, the current implementation of the PCTO implies that the chance to make a significant, age-appropriate, and safe-from-exploitation experience depends widely on the students’ racial background, language, class, social and cultural capitals. PCTO policy outcomes show how multiply marginalized students, especially those from multilingual racialized migrant backgrounds, are less likely to access organizations that would help them find appropriate, non-working-class types of professions. Interestingly, the policy’s analysis also suggests the PCTO for disabled students is significantly different (Fenza, 2024). Disabled students do not participate in a placement in an external organization; instead, they attend a school-based “workshop” (Traina & Lascioli, 2023). Again, from a CDR point of view, this shows that post-secondary transition for disabled students, and multilingual racialized disabled migrant students, entails merely a changing of caregivers, and not a real pathway to emancipation and independence (Marchisio, 2019). The post-school transition into a career seems to be absolutely not needed for them, as they are still perceived as non-functioning subjects (Migliarini, 2018).

Adopting a CDR lens to the policy analysis, we can argue that the PCTO program has historically discriminated against multilingual racialized and disabled migrant students in, mainly, two ways. First, data shows that this leads to a significant disadvantage in access to the labor market; thus, they suffer the consequences of a precarious life when they finish secondary school (Curto & Marchisio, 2022). Second, if they cannot find employment when secondary school ends, they can end up being institutionalized in segregated disability youth and adult services, as argued by Curto (2024). To make matters worse, multilingual racialized disabled migrant students are dispossessed of Italian citizenship, and they live under the pressure of obtaining a good employment contract to stay legally in the country. Because of these institutional oppressions, and after the passing of the Delegating Act 227, in 2022 the Piedmont region developed the Pensami Indipendente policy [Think of Me as Independent] to effectively enact the principles of the CRPD.

Resulting from the synergy of the Piedmont Regional Office for Work and Vocational Training, the Center for the Rights and Independent Living of the University of Turin, and the Metropolitan City of Turin, Pensami Indipendente centers the working needs and career aspirations of multilingual racialized disabled migrant students. The core of this policy revolves around the application of the Work Intellectual Disabilities Environment (WIDE) approach. This is a model of job placement developed between 2015 and 2019 by the Research Centre for Rights and Independent Living to address the violation of the right to work of people with intellectual and relational disabilities (Marchisio & Curto, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c). Since 2022, the policy has been implemented in schools, through the Regional Office’s guidelines and funding. The Research Centre group offered technical support to practitioners and schools, and researched organizational needs to make it more effective.

The innovative aspect of the Pensami Indipendente policy, which aligns more with the CDR tenets, is that it requires placement organizations to have the availability to hire the young disabled/multiply marginalized students immediately after the secondary school graduation. The placement organization adapts to the young students’ characteristics and commits to promote a real sense of inclusion. The Pensami Indipendente policy transforms the PCTO, by considering the mundane experiences and needs of young disabled/multiply marginalized students (Marchisio & Curto, 2019b). Pensami Indipendente-informed PCTOs push teachers and educators to imagine a professional future for these young students, based on their aspirations and dreams. Pensami Indipendente-informed PCTOs reduce the risk of institutionalization and isolation for disabled/multiply marginalized young students and provide teachers with a framework for sustaining their creative and professional imagination inside and outside the classroom (Monchietto & Marchisio, 2025; Marchisio et al., 2024). First results of the policy application suggest that through such transformations, multiply marginalized students have a chance at seeing their agency, citizenship and freedom affirmed (Monchietto & Marchisio, 2025; Damiani et al., 2021). Pensami Indipendente-informed PCTOs also address and neutralize family networks, and other forms of social and economic capital, at play during the placement choice. The PCTO placement organizations are carefully chosen by the team of educators involved, in agreement with the students. The prospect of concrete job opportunities at the end of school years helps mitigate the high risk of exploitation and precarity in terms of unfair workload and temporary types of contracts, especially towards young racialized disabled migrants (Ambrosini & Campomori, 2024).

In January 2027, the Pensami Indipendente-informed PCTOs will be integrated with more tools aimed at eliminating barriers in other areas of life. This expansion will allow for an even better understanding of the intersectional needs of multiply marginalized students during their post-secondary transitions. We are aware that the implementation of this policy is still ongoing, and it needs to be systematically accompanied by expansive local efforts to promote culturally sustaining and affirming professional development training, addressing teachers’ biases and prejudices. However, at a time of far-right, authoritarian and openly discriminatory political rhetoric, we see this Piedmont policy as an affirming and potentially radically inclusive tool for post-secondary transition of multilingual racialized disabled migrant youth. The following section of the paper continues with the analysis of the practical product of the Delegating Act 227: the Individual, Personalized, Participatory Life Project (IPPLP). As we will demonstrate, the IPPLP has the potential to transform the training of school professionals, service providers and communities in more intersectional terms.

5. Individual, Personalized, Participatory Life Project (IPPLP): Intersectional Possibilities for Post-Secondary Transition of Multiply Marginalized Students

The Delegating Act 227 of 2021 has triggered a profound transformation in Italy’s inclusion policies, as it intends to reshape institutions to be in alignment with the CRPD tenets and the Italian Constitution principles (Piccione, 2019; Santoro, 2021). Prior to the Delegating Act 227, services were operating with a shared medicalized perspective of disability. Disability diagnoses were carried out on the basis of “severity”, that is the measurement of the distance of the disabled person from the “norm”. The “severity” had the power to define people’s living spaces, possibilities, support, and even rights (Curto, 2025b). For multilingual racialized migrant students, linguistic practices and language proficiency have been used to construct them as disabled subjects, not capable of learning or of participating in the host society, through the SENitization process (Migliarini, 2018; Migliarini & Cioè-Peña, 2022). Despite being enshrined in the Constitution, disabled and multiply marginalized people’s freedom rights (e.g., freedom of movement, or choice of housing), were denied by the very organization of the services (Curto, 2021; Griffo, 2014). To effectively implement the CRPD and the Italian Constitution, Delegating Act 227 highlights structural changes at epistemological, organizational, and funding levels (C. Tarantino, 2025; C. Tarantino & Marchisio, 2025). Firstly, all services are expected to adopt a non-medical and more socially constructed definition of disability. Such a definition implies that disability is not a characteristic but a situation (Parisi & Self Advocacy Group, in press), and it cannot be conceived without paying attention to the social and environmental contexts of a person’s life. Secondly, services should operate by redistributing power in the hands of disabled and multiply marginalized people, moving beyond deficit perspectives (T. Tarantino, 2024). Thirdly, services should consider disabled people’s multiple identities, and the multiple axes of oppression that they can experience. These changes are surely more in line with the CDR tenets and principles of centering the voices, experiences and knowledge of multilingual racialized disabled migrant youth.

The tool identified by the Delegating Act 227 to guide the implementation of the three points above is the Individual, Personalized, Participated Life Project (IPPLP) (Curto, 2025a; Marchisio, 2024, 2025), to which every disabled person is entitled. The IPPLP came into force nationally in 2024; however, Italian regions are not compelled to implement it effectively until the 1 January 2027. This tool of personalized support is grounded in disabled and multiply marginalized people’s needs, desires and aspirations, finally ensuring the full enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms.

5.1. Epistemological and Contextual Changes

The first action that the IPPLP introduces is the creation of a team of professionals, directly chosen by the disabled/multiply marginalized person (e.g., racialized multilingual youth), who is an active decision-making member of this team. The purpose of the team, operating for schools and other educational and social organizations within a specific local context, is to collaboratively explore the attitudinal and environmental barriers that the disabled and multiply marginalized person faces, which hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. From a CDR stance, this shift in decision-making power, centering the voice of the disabled/multiply marginalized subject, has important intersectional implications. Firstly, all the interlocking systems of oppression in society can emerge and be addressed. Secondly, the primacy of “objective” and “deficit”-centered medical models is questioned and can be substituted with a more affirming, person-centered approach. Ultimately, this action has powerful transformative implications for the community in which multilingual racialized disabled migrant youth live.

The second action envisioned by the IPPLP is the active, collaborative, strategic dismantling of all attitudinal and environmental barriers by educators, teachers, social workers, and all professionals, involved in supporting the disabled and multiply marginalized person. This action calls directly into scrutiny the ways in which these professionals are trained. Analyzing this from the CDR perspective, we can see how possibilities for critical reflective praxis are opened, with the purpose of a radical understanding of how intersecting oppressions impact the multiply marginalized person. Through critical reflective practices, educators develop awareness of racism, ableism and their complex intersection. They can address the beliefs and values they hold about multiply marginalized students. This, in turn, can impact their instructional decision-making, assessment, training and employment guidance they offer to multiply marginalized students in the post-secondary transition. Critical self-reflexive practices can involve a personal language and attitude inventory, where educators pay attention to themes of language use tied to intimacy, privilege, and discrimination. Educators can engage in critical reflections of their experience in schools with disabled and multiply marginalized students. They can consider how their beliefs and values impact on their teaching and the students’ learning in the classroom. Finally, they can reflect on the experiences that disabled/marginalized students have outside of school. It is hoped that through this action educators and professionals can have the time, critical discussion, reflective opportunities, engagement with the literature and examples, and compassionate guidance to begin unlearning oppressive ideologies on disability, race, language and migration internalized through socialization in schools, homes and communities.

5.2. Transformation of Professional Development

Piedmont has chosen the area of job placement in the transition to adulthood of multiply marginalized youth, to anticipate the implementation of the Delegating Act 227. For this reason, it has spent significant resources on expanding the professional development of educators and service providers. For example, in 2023 the region invested in the University of Turin to employ disabled and multiply marginalized activists to deliver professional development modules to educators, such as Progettazione di Interventi a Sostegno del Diritto a Lavoro in Attuazione della Convenzione ONU Sui Diritti delle Persone con disabilità [Designing Interventions to Support the Right to Work to Implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities], and Progettazione Personalizzata e Partecipata in Attuazione della Convenzione ONU sui Diritti delle Persone con Disabilità (CRPD) [Personalized and Participatory Design for the Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)]. This last module has been completely funded by regional institutions.

The purpose of the first course is to

• Equip future educators with effective operational models to support the right to work and promote employment inclusion, with particular attention on those who face greater discrimination in accessing the labor market;
• Prepare future educators to navigate organizational contexts, particularly corporate organizations, with an awareness of the interlocking systems of oppression multiply marginalized students face;
• Develop the ability to introduce operational solutions that move toward deinstitutionalization of disabled youth;
• Encourage the adoption of an emancipatory approach in defining objectives, tools, and methods;
• Enhance the professionalism of service providers, supporting the rights of those who encounter barriers, particularly cognitive and relational barriers.6

The second course is focused on the following:

• Providing educators, social workers, psychologists, and other social professionals with theoretical and practical tools to support the personalized and participatory life plan of people who encounter cognitive, relational, and social barriers;
• Offering operational tools for understanding organizations, navigating social and health services, and consequently implementing community-based interventions and designing or modifying citizenship contexts that support the full participation of disabled people;
• Helping social workers become agents of change, position themselves within the emerging debate on service reorganization, and guide them in the context of the UN Convention and personalized and participatory planning.7

Another example of intersectional changes made, in light of the IPPLP, to teacher training for post-secondary transition is the Progetto COESI [Co-designing Inclusive Schools].8 COESI is an innovative intersectional inclusive education practice for secondary schools, based on collaboration and on the recognition of identities, educational needs and career aspirations of multiply marginalized students.

5.2.1. Scope of COESI

The COESI project focuses specifically on the secondary classroom context and the co-planning between teachers, school professionals, and students for their education and transition. It helps teachers and educators create a healthy classroom ecology where the diversity of multiply marginalized students is embedded in every aspect of education: curriculum, instructions, assessment, post-transition. COESI also encourages teachers, school professionals’ and all stakeholders to participate proactively in the educational endeavor.

5.2.2. Resources

Secondary schools participating in the COESI project receive specialized educational support from the Right to Education Office of the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region. Additionally, schools receive economic and material resources to meet with experts, and receive technical and IT support.

5.2.3. Activities

The main activities in the COESI project concern co-planning between teachers, school professionals, students, and services in the communities, creating a bridge between the classroom and the larger society. A specific focus is given to group dynamics and relationship building in a participatory environment. Also, the project entails events where school activities are shared with families and communities. Starting in 2025/26, schools with greater needs can request enhanced support, including additional meetings with consultants and experts.

5.2.4. Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation of the project’s effectiveness happen iteratively, through staff questionnaires, and without judging schools or individuals. Feedback is constantly provided to improve the implementation of intersectional pedagogical practices and post-secondary transition support. Final questionnaires are administered at the end of the school year.

5.3. Training Multiply Marginalized Youth Families

In light of the implementation of the IPPLP, the University of Turin has invested in training workshops to support multiply marginalized youth families, especially those from multilingual migrant backgrounds. For example, the 2024 Summer School on the Delegated Act 227/2219 is the first national program for multiply marginalized families, focusing on the innovations introduced by the implementation of the new Delegated Act 227/2021 on disability and inclusion. The summer school aims to initiate a process of empowerment for families, by supporting them to speak up and understand their rights, especially in the post-secondary transition period. During the program, families are supported in understanding that their children have the right to choose their own life path, according to their children’s desires and expectations, regardless of their backgrounds. Furthermore, the initiative proposes a collective shift in contexts and organizations, with a view to implementing the new means of support indicated by the Delegated Act, and the Pensami Indipendente regional policy. The summer school was a residential experience that explored national legislation, the right to self-determination, and the freedom of disabled and multiply marginalized children. It included informational, educational, and social activities, as well as recreational and sporting activities. The following final sections of the paper present the implication of the Delegated Act and of the Pensami Indipendente regional policy for research and practice, as well as the conclusion containing some optimism for a transition towards more intersectional approaches to inclusive education for racialized multilingual migrant youth with and without disabilities.

6. Implications

We believe that the implications of the Delegated Act and of the Pensami Indipendente regional policy are vast, especially for research and practice. As regards research, this act and policy necessarily call for an anti-positivist transformation of research methodologies, since the very definition of disability that the CRPD introduces obliges scholars and policy makers to consider disability as a matter of context and disabilization, moving beyond the medical model, in order to center more authentically the experiences and voices of multiply marginalized youth, especially those considered by this paper (Di Leva & Festa, 2025; Festa & Di Leva, 2025; Festa et al., 2024). By humanizing research methodologies, more space can be made for intersectional and interdisciplinary epistemological perspectives.

The implementation of the reform implies a transition towards more intersectional and interdisciplinary research, in particular in the fields of special and intercultural education. Implementation of reform calls for research methodologies that center more authentically the voices and experiences of multiply marginalized students, especially multilingual racialized migrant students. As regards pedagogical practices, we are optimistic that the reform presents an opportunity to disrupt the process of SENitization, avoiding the over pathologization of multilingual migrant students with or without disabilities, as we reported above (D’Alessio, 2026). Unfortunately, due to a slow pace in the application process, the reform will not be fully implemented nationally until January 2027. We believe that local institutions should work to address the grey areas around the activation of all programs for these groups of students, as the services will be available to students only if they have a certified diagnosis of disability. We fear that the current public and media discourse, characterized by the re-insurgence of far-right extremism, racism, xenophobia and ableism can impact teachers and school professionals’ perspectives on racialized multilingual migrant youth with or without disabilities. Such a public climate might slow down the understanding and the implementation of the reform, and related tools, at a national level.

7. Conclusions

This paper has advanced the conceptual analysis of post-secondary transition of multilingual racialized disabled migrant youth in Italy, by analyzing the national CRPD implementation through Delegating Act 227 of 2021, and the Piedmont policy Pensami Indipendente. Drawing from the Critical Disability Raciolinguistic (CDR) perspective, the paper has shed light on emerging intersectional practices that can be used in Piedmont, and in the whole of Italy, to train teachers, educators and service providers through the Individual, Personalized, Participatory Life Project (IPPLP). The analysis of the policy and implementing tool reveals possibilities and tensions towards more intersectional models of inclusive education for multiply marginalized youth. The CRPD national and regional implementation, through Pensami Indipendente and the IPPLP, promotes an understanding of race, disability and diversity as social construction, more in line with the tenets of critical frameworks such as CDR. Delegating Act 227 recommends this epistemology to be infused in policies, practitioner training, and practices. This implies a serious re-thinking and restructuring of service providers, as we have demonstrated in this paper, for supporting post-secondary transition of multiply marginalized students, considering the interlocking oppressions they face inside and outside the classroom. Hence, addressing multiply marginalized youth’s lack of equitable access to resources, power, and privileges becomes an explicit objective around which to organize national and regional policies, and funding distribution. This opens new possibilities for systematic education and long-term inclusive actions. Delegating Law 227, Pensami Indipendente policy and the IPPLP all contribute to educators, teachers’ and service providers’ intersectional awareness, embedding critical principles such as the ones expressed by CDR into mandatory training and school-level policies. Consequently, teachers and educators are equipped with critical epistemologies that can help them re-shape their daily pedagogical practices, and form critical communities against the hegemony of racism, ableism, and neoliberal reforms in education.10

The implementation of Delegating Act 227 and of the Pensami Indipendente Policy and its tool has its own challenges. First, those managing services at regional and territorial levels for disabled and multiply marginalized youth have their own political and economic agenda, and they often intend to maintain the status quo, lobbying to undermine the effective implementation of the above policy. Education and welfare service providers are run partly nationally and partly regionally. Hence, the regional implementation of the Delegating Act 227 can be significantly different, especially in terms of equity and access to resources by multiply marginalized youth. The better the social, cultural and relational capitals are within service providers at the regional level, the more successful the implementation of the IPPLP will be. This risks being inequitable as the north–south economic disparity in Italy mirrors the availability of social and cultural resources. We remain, however, hopeful that Delegating Act 227 can spark territorial and regional organizing among teachers, educators and other service providers to dismantle neoliberal approaches to education, and to guarantee more equitable and inclusive learning experiences to multiply marginalized youth.