Having No Voice, Being Non-Citizens: The Political Dimension Of Community Service Learning Between Intersectionality And Social Innovation

This paper examines the role of community educational centres as drivers of social innovation oriented towards educational justice, drawing on the case of "L'ABC del Quartiere" in Milan's San Siro district. Located in a context marked by segregation, educational poverty, and a high concentration of migrant populations (Grassi, 2022), the study investigates how proximity-based educational practices can address the structural inequalities that intersect in the lives of women and children. The theoretical framework adopts an intersectional perspective (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2020) to interpret the condition of mothers in San Siro. They stand at the crossroads of multiple discriminations: gender, as women navigating patriarchal structures; ethnic-religious identity, as Arab-Muslims in an Islamophobic society; housing and class, as residents of a ghettoized neighborhood; and legal status, as mothers of children born in Italy denied citizenship under ius sanguinis.Three perspectives are integrated. Social innovation (Moulaert & MacCallum, 2019) frames L'ABC as a laboratory for bottom-up collective action. Nancy Fraser's three-dimensional justice model (2008) is articulated in an intersectional manner: redistribution (combating educational poverty), recognition (valuing heritage languages), and representation (struggling for participatory parity despite formal exclusion). Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy (1971) conceives education as a practice of freedom, transforming mothers and children into co-constructors of the educational environment, while simultaneously, Community Service Learning (CSL) at L'ABC shapes the professional identity of education students (Zecca, 2024). Intertwined with participatory action research, CSL cultivates "transformative intellectuals" (Giroux, 1988), thus becoming a political dimension of pedagogical professions: a site of resistance against the systematic denial of citizenship. The research adopts a qualitative, participatory methodology: participant observation and research diaries analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021); semi-structured interviews with 16 mothers attending the L2 Italian course; and participatory focus groups with educators, teachers, and CSL students. Preliminary findings reveal four impacts. Redistributive: individualized tutoring produced 30% improvement in L2 Italian literacy (CILS certifications), reducing implicit school dropout. Recognition: valorization of Arabic disrupts children's linguistic invisibility, strengthening scholastic legitimacy (Zecca & Lefterov, 2025). For mothers, seeing their language valued counters social devaluation. Participation and citizenship: mothers' trust in institutions increased through co-presence (Sacerdote, Zecca, 2025). Yet the paradox of denied legal citizenship persists: they participate actively but remain excluded from formal politics. The centre becomes a space of substantive citizenship, where belonging is prefiguratively enacted. Mothers' voices become political acts of resistance. Social innovation and CSL as political practice: multi-agency collaboration configures an ecosystem of care (Zecca, Fredella & Cotza, 2024). CSL students develop border consciousness, learning to stand alongside those deprived of the right to have rights. Preliminary evidence from this ongoing experience suggests that L'ABC, anchored to an intersectional social justice framework, may offer a valuable model for recomposing the misalignment between school and territory. As a longitudinal study now in progress, the centre appears to function as a laboratory of democracy where pedagogical research is gradually transmuted into political practice, potentially advocating for full citizenship rights.