Separated children in southern areas between the theory and practices

The subject of separated children is socially and institutionally complex and their situation has recently been summarized by the expression “children in transition”. In Italy they have become the crossing point of different legal systems, particularly between the migration law and juvenile law system as well as suffering, legally and practically, the intersection of several specific statuses (minor, separated, immigrant). Differently form services to adults, the ones that support the social “integration” of these young boys are locally based and the quality of the services provided seems more and more depending on the good will of single institutional and individual actors. In the paper we try to analyse the condition of these young migrants, their “being at the border” of their adultness, of the many systems of social control and integration and of the spaces that are built around them. Through a re-construction of their actual situation in Europe, their numbers and conditions, of the process of their integration and of the actors involved in Italy and, finally, trough in-depth interviews to some separated children in Sicily, we try to reach a better understanding of the phenomenon in order to assess, albeit partially, the strengths and weaknesses of actual political-social interventions.