Boundaries of language, boundaries of worlds: a reflection on hate speech experienced and internalized among minors from different cultures

In the field of migration studies, the Eurocentric and ethnocentric analysis (Said, 1999; Sayad, 2002) has already been extensively explored as a point of demarcation in the power relations between groups, perpetually constructing the enemy and the scapegoat (Eco, 2020). In recent decades, the massive influence of social media (Ratajczak & Galzignato, 2019; Pasta 2023a) has undoubtedly contributed to the proliferation of social stereotypes (Galeotti, 2019), reinforcing toxic (Fiorucci, 2019) and anti-dialogical narratives. This paper presents the outcomes of an educational intervention with a group of unaccompanied foreign minors to examine the potential perception of the effects of hate speech experienced and internalized in their interpersonal language. Is the communication of these minors influenced by patterns of hate speech adopted from the host culture, or do such patterns pre-exist in their culture of origin? Intercultural coexistence, indeed, is a soft skill that must be nurtured through the mediation of emergency educators and pedagogists (Vaccarelli, 2017; Annacontini et al., 2022): communities are not given, but an outcome to be strived for through awareness of practices and the decolonization of minds (hooks, 2022).