My research project stems from a professional experience prior to my doctoral studies, in public high schools, where I taught Chinese Language and Culture. In this context, I encountered many students of Chinese origin who had experienced a transnational childhood and who, throughout their schooling, faced significant difficulties, often resulting in early school leaving.
Living a transnational childhood means growing up across multiple countries, educational systems, and family contexts, often in discontinuous ways. For many children with a migrant background, childhood does not unfold in a single place but is shaped through departures, separations, and reunifications, which profoundly affect the emotional, linguistic, and educational dimensions of development. In the case of Chinese families, it is common for children to spend their early years in China, cared for by grandparents or other caregivers,
while their parents migrate abroad for work; family reunification then occurs at a later stage, often during school age or adolescence, a particularly delicate phase of the life course.
These experiences entail profound changes: entry into new linguistic environments, the renegotiation of affective relationships, and encounters with different educational and schooling models. Transitions between contexts are never neutral, as they shape learning trajectories, senses of belonging, and identity formation processes. Transnational childhood should not be understood solely in terms of lack or deficit, as is often the case in the literature; rather, it constitutes a complex and ambivalent experience, capable of producing both vulnerabilities and valuable resources and skills, such as bilingualism, cultural flexibility, adaptability, and resilience.
However, when these trajectories intersect with the Italian school system, the complexity of students’ personal histories often remains in the background. Linguistic difficulties, the timing of family reunification, and prior educational experiences are not always recognised or fully understood, with significant consequences for educational pathways. Observing these trajectories led to an initial research question: to what extent are teachers actually aware of their students’ migratory, family, and educational histories? And, above all, have these students ever been given the space and conditions to narrate their experiences within school contexts?
In my everyday teaching practice, it became clear that many young people of Chinese origin, faced with significant linguistic barriers—affecting both themselves and their families—perceived continuing education as excessively demanding or scarcely accessible, often viewing entry into the labour market as a more immediate option. From this perspective, early school leaving cannot be interpreted as an individual choice or a lack of motivation, but rather as the outcome of a system that struggles to recognise and support the complexity of transnational lived experiences.
The research project therefore aims to give voice to adolescents and young adults, placing their biographical narratives and lived experiences between China and Italy at the centre of the analysis. Through a qualitative, ethnographic, and biographical approach, the study seeks to understand how experiences of transnational childhood shape educational trajectories, relationships with schooling, and life choices, and how schools might be better equipped to welcome and support these students—not only in terms of linguistic assistance, but also through recognition of their stories.
Alongside fieldwork and qualitative interviews, the project includes a phase of digital exploration conducted on the platform Red Note (小红书), an online space in which many young people of Chinese origin feel free to express themselves, share personal experiences, school- and family-related difficulties, as well as exchange advice and forms of mutual support. Analysing these contents makes it possible to capture narratives that rarely emerge
in institutional settings.
Proficiency in the Chinese language represents an essential condition for the entire research project, as it enables direct access to online narratives, the conduct of interviews in the participants’ language of choice, and the creation of a more balanced space of listening. In conclusion, this study seeks to make visible experiences that are often marginalised and to reflect on the role of the school as a space of recognition and listening, capable of engaging with the complexity of life trajectories in contemporary migratory contexts.