H.12. Intercultural Knowledges and Practices for Democratic Education

In today’s global context—marked by intensified migration flows, rising identity-based closures, and an increasingly polarized public discourse—discussing democratic education without engaging critically with interculturality risks remaining a purely disembodied exercise. Existing inequalities, along with processes of racialization and the progressive hardening of borders, compel us to rethink access to rights, practices of citizenship, and the recognition of plurality— dimensions that have always shaped human histories and the places in which they unfold (Catarci, Fiorucci, 2015; Tarozzi, Torres, 2016). If intercultural education is conceived not as a specific topic but as a constitutive fabric of a democratic perspective, we are called to adopt a critical stance capable of moving beyond a generic rhetoric of “diversity” and situating social and epistemic justice as the overarching framework for meaning and action, starting from the spaces in which learning and training take place (Aman, 2017).

This panel therefore aims to explore the intersections between interculturality, migration processes, global citizenship, knowledge reconstruction, and democratic education, viewing educational and social contexts as potentially transformative and critical spaces.

Building on these premises, the panel welcomes theoretical and empirical contributions on:

• Migration and intercultural coexistence

• Intercultural mediation

• Narratives and representations of diversity

• Critical and decolonial approaches to knowledge reconstruction

• Intercultural competences in educational services

• Global citizenship education and social justice

• Intercultural and interreligious dialogue

• Human rights education

• Identities and emerging forms of racism

• Heterogeneity of contexts and intersectionality;

• Peace education and conflicts management;