Abstract

I propose an exploration of a peripheral school located in the famous Neapolitan district of Scampia selected as a case-study. I discuss the organizational arrangements emerged from in-depth interviews collected among school managers and teachers, aimed at rescuing the school from stigma, segregation and deviance. In particular, I distinguish material and symbolic requalification, ‘mixité sociale’ and external mobilization as the main strategies acted in order to resist the ‘double-peripherality’ of a school which is a professional institute located in a stigmatized suburb. In this way, I aim at sketching the specifical traits of peripheral school considered as a definite scholastic configuration. It rests on a spatial dimension that is indispensable for grasping the social processes that take place in it and for exploring the complex and dynamic relations between educational institutions and the city.