Development of the Territory Between Identity Dynamics, Interpretation of the Role and Active Participation: An Extensive Research With Sicilian Adolescents

In the modern day world with its processes of rapid and continuous change, it has become particularly important to understand how citizens, particularly the young generations, live with regard to their own life context and feel involved in the future of their society. In this framework, it seems plausible to hypothesize that the school, whose main task is to educate the young, carries out a dynamic role in the life planning and civic sense of adolescents by promoting active participation. The data of our research, carried with 2.461 students of Sicilian schools, indicated the desire of the majority of those interviewed to fulfil themselves elsewhere, far from Sicily, and the ambivalent nature of the bond that emerges concerning one’s own territory. Also, those who see themselves in the future closer to their own territory valued more than the others the notion that in the future they will contribute actively to its development. This data confirmed the hypothesis by which participation, as the acceptance of an active-propositive role, is linked to involvement with one’s own territorial life context, accepted as part of one’s own Self.