Along the margins, across the borders: Teaching and learning among Veneto attrazionisti viaggianti in Italy

The article presents the findings of an ethnographic study carried out among Italian attrazionisti viaggianti (fairground and circus people) who lead a nomadic life and work in four Veneto provinces (Padua, Vicenza, Treviso and Venice). Defining parents as marginalised pedagogues engaged in the task of enculturating their children, the author explores and discusses: (1) how children of attrazionisti succeed in learning this occupational minority's culture and how enculturation and schooling are related; (2) how schooling is experienced by them and how it is interpreted by both them and their families; and (3) how schooling relates to their nomadic everyday life and to their prospects for the future. The author argues that enculturation plays a powerful and empowering role with respect to the occupational minority's cultural continuity and sense of agency but that schools’ organisational and cultural rules, on the one hand, and social prejudices against nomadism, on the other, seldom promote a positive recognition of the minority's diversity or its educational value and instead maintain it in a position of marginality within Italian stratified society.