Conference Agenda

Islamic parenting support refers to parenting support aligned with the religious needs, child-raising norms, and values of the Muslim families. As such, it constitutes a form of faith-based social work program: it is offered by a religious institution, and there is little to no evidence about its efficacy (Patrick et al., 2008). Cognizant of the need for a better understanding of the low participation rates of Muslim families in parenting support services offered by formal non-religious providers in the Netherlands (Van Mourik et al., 2016) and abroad (Thomson et al., 2016), the study aims to provide new insights about Muslim parents’ preferences and needs in that regard, and recommendations to schools and developers of mainstream parenting programs.

In this study, I borrow from the dual analytical framework on parenting support developed by Daly (2015). Daly (2015) specifies that parenting support interventions are simultaneously a social policy form: aiming to equip parents with the necessary knowledge and skills for increasing their parental self-efficacy, and a social and political intervention which is laden with the values and agenda of the actors providing the support. Daly (2015), but also others (Hey & Bradford, 2006 cited in Daly, 2015) point out that, besides its empowering function, parenting support also has an implicit rationale of regulation and control of poor ‘problem families’.
There might be a variety of reasons why Muslim families might prefer to receive parenting support from their mosque association instead of their municipal programs. Van Mourik et al. (2016), for example, point out that Moroccan-Dutch Muslim parents reportedly experience difficulties related to “raising their child ‘between two cultures’” (p. 348) and struggle most in addressing undesirable peer and media influences regarding alcohol use and sexual relationships. This is not surprising considering the normative character of parenting and its civic function for constructing a sense of belonging both to families’ Islamic heritage and to the mainstream society (see e.g. van Beurden & de Haan, 2020, for a discussion of the power imbalances experienced by self-organized Moroccan parenting groups in Rotterdam in the negotiation of inclusion and exclusion practices in the public domain regarding parenting).
Furthermore, although a review of the literature on parent training programs for ethnic minority families indicates that the programs with cultural adaptations are more effective (Van Mourik et al., 2017), culturally relevant parenting support programs which are tailored to the specific needs of Muslim families are scarce (Scourfield et al., 2013; Thomson et al., 2018b), and some scholars argue that most universal parenting programs are underpinned by white, middle-class values (Thomson et al., 2018a). On the other hand, Muslim families with migrant background and their mosque associations share what Franceschelli and O’Brien (2014) call “Islamic capital” in Bourdieu’s sense of the word: the set of ideas around family spirit, morality, ethics and behavioral codes which are considered culturally or religiously appropriate for child-rearing (according to Islam). This shared Islamic cultural capital might play a facilitating role for higher parental trust in the parenting support activities offered by the mosques and might explain Muslim parents’ low participation rates and lack of interest in formal and semi-formal mainstream parenting programs.
In the light of these, this study asks:
1. What kind of parenting support activities are offered in the Turkish mosques in the Netherlands and with which rationale?
2. What are the experiences of Turkish-Dutch Muslim parents with mosque-based parenting support activities, and what is their motivation for choosing for them?
3. Which gaps in the field of formal parenting support are addressed by mosque-based parenting support activities, and what are the implications of these for formal providers of parenting support and policymakers in Dutch youth care?

Topic and Rationale
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered one of the largest forced displacement movements in contemporary Europe, with significant implications for national education systems across the EU. While European policy frameworks strongly emphasise rapid school inclusion for displaced children, less attention has been paid to how inclusion is experienced by migrant families themselves, particularly in terms of belonging, identity, and emotional attachment to schools and host societies. This paper contributes to migration and education research by examining the lived experiences of Ukrainian forced migrant students and their families within the French education system, focusing on the tension between formal schooling access and the production of meaningful belonging.

Research Questions
The study addresses the following research questions:

1. How do multiple factors – such as language, peer relations, family circumstances, and institutional practices – interact to shape processes of inclusion and exclusion for Ukrainian forced migrant students in French schools?
2. How do Ukrainian students, their parents, and French teachers perceive and interpret challenges related to learning, integration, and emotional adjustment in the context of forced migration?
3. To what extent does schooling facilitate or constrain the development of belonging for forced migrant families in a transnational context?

Objectives
The primary objective of this study is to explore how schooling functions simultaneously as a site of protection, discipline, and boundary-making for forced migrant families. The paper aims to move beyond deficit-oriented narratives that frame refugee learners primarily through trauma and vulnerability, instead highlighting how belonging is negotiated relationally through everyday interactions between students, families, peers, and educators. By focusing on families as well as schools, the study seeks to illuminate how children’s educational experiences are intertwined with parents’ social positioning, labour market participation, and future-oriented aspirations shaped by uncertainty and displacement.

Conceptual and Theoretical Framework
The analysis is grounded in migration and social theory, drawing primarily on Floya Anthias’s distinction between identity and belonging and her concept of translocational positionality, alongside Nira Yuval-Davis’s work on the politics of belonging. These frameworks enable an examination of belonging as an affective, relational, and structurally mediated process rather than a stable outcome of institutional inclusion. The study also engages with social identity theory to interrogate how strong attachments to national or ethnic identities may function both as resources for resilience and as constraints on integration. By situating Ukrainian forced migrants within European hierarchies of mobility and deservingness, the paper adopts a critical perspective on selective solidarity and differentiated inclusion across contemporary Europe.

European and International Dimension
Although conducted in France, the study addresses issues of broader European relevance. The experiences analysed reflect shared challenges faced by education systems across Europe in responding to forced migration, including language provision, teacher preparedness, psychosocial support, and family-school relations. By examining Ukrainian forced migrants – a group positioned between humanitarian protection and expectations of return – the paper contributes to comparative debates on migration, schooling, and belonging in Europe and beyond.

In Italy growing migration has led to increasingly diverse and multicultural contexts, posing significant challenges for national welfare services (Di Rosa & Allegri, 2022). The difficulties encountered by migrant families, particularly in accessing services and managing school-family relations, highlight the need to implement policies that promote social coexistence and conflict management, going beyond the recognition and possible reconciliation of cultural differences (Coppola, Rania, & Pinna, 2021). In this framework, the children of migrant families (not only first-generation but also second-generation) face greater difficulties at school than their Italian-speaking peers, mainly due to language barriers, socio-cultural disadvantages (leading to fewer opportunities), and other factors preventing integration (such as the stress of acculturation) (Mussino & Strozza, 2012; Dusi, Steinbach, & Falcon, 2014; Cavioni, Conte, & Ornaghi, 2024).

In the school-family relationship, especially during compulsory education, migrant parents face significant difficulties in communicating and relating to school bodies and teachers (Mantovani & Gasperoni, 2018; Santagati & Colussi, 2024). This contribution aims to present the initial findings of an experience and research carried out by a multifunctional educational centre whose objectives include fostering and supporting the school-family relationship in the case of migrant families, particularly Arabic-speaking ones. This centre is called "L'ABC del quartiere" and has been operating since September 2022 in the afternoon, in a very complex urban area, San Siro (Milan), where more than 85 different nationalities live, mainly families from North Africa and the Middle East. Many of them are in precarious socio-economic conditions and face significant vulnerabilities (Grassi, 2022). In this area, the rates of school dropout are very high (Lefterov & Coacci, 2024). This situation can be understood within a condition of polycris, where migration, educational inequality, socio-economic deprivation, and institutional fragility intersect and mutually reinforce each other.

The centre was developed by the University of Milano-Bicocca as part of the MUSA project - Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action (NextGenerationEU), specifically in Spoke 6, Action 3.1.3, aimed at combating and preventing early school leaving in disadvantaged urban contexts (Zecca, Fredella, & Cotza, 2024). The community education perspective sees schools and non-formal educational services as parts of an integrated system, capable of networking with families, local associations, and educational institutions (Zecca, 2024). The approach is based on an ecological-systemic paradigm (Bronfenbrenner, 2005), which aims to strengthen the connections between the micro (individual educational interactions), meso (relationships between school, family, and services), and macro (educational and socio-territorial policies) levels.

L'ABC del quartiere was created in response to a need identified by the community, namely to offer practical support to families and children who encounter difficulties in mainstream education, often linked to linguistic and cultural barriers. The centre was conceived as a "low-threshold" service, where children and youth aged between 0 and 13 and their families can find activities tailored to their age and developmental needs. The centre draws on the expertise of various professionals (educators, researchers, a cultural mediator, and interns) and is organized into three spaces: children aged 0 to 7 are welcomed into the Family Time, with laboratories and play activities; children aged 8 to 13 are welcomed in the Study Space, where they find individualized tutoring (Cotza, Coacci, & Fredella, 2025); a third area is dedicated to mothers, who are offered an Italian L2 course. The activities are aimed both at learning and at developing an authentic relationship, built on the personal experiences and linguistic resources.

Specifically, this contribution aims to analyze how the centre has structured its relationship with schools to support both the school-family relationship and student learning processes, also investigating how this process has been experienced and perceived by mothers attending the service.

This proposal advances an empirically grounded and theoretically situated account of friendship as emotional infrastructure sustaining the everyday school life of racialized girls in Spain. Drawing on 63 in‑depth interviews with Roma, African, Latin American, and Asian young women who grew up in Spanish schools (PID2022‑140540OA‑I00, 2023–2026), we show how peer relations both mitigate and reproduce the cumulative effects of routine racialization, misrecognition, and subtle institutional practices (e.g., repeated mispronunciation of names, minimization of racist incidents) (Ahmed 2004; Honneth 1995). Our argument responds directly to ECER’s 2026 theme “Knowing and Acting”, which calls for critical reflection on how educational knowledge is produced and mobilized amid a shifting ecosystem marked by datafication, political instrumentalization, and a broader poly‑crisis (pandemic, planetary crisis, war). We treat friendship not as a peripheral “soft” domain but as a privileged site where knowledge of belonging, safety, and recognition is made, tested, and circulated knowledge that is vital for action by educators, school leaders, families, and communities (Ahmed 2004).

Our findings highlight four contributions. First, in compulsory schooling, friendships are often fragile and ambivalent: racialized girls navigate isolation, microaggressions, and segregated peer ecologies even in “diverse” schools (Branje et al. 2021). Friendship simultaneously buffers harm and mirrors the symbolic boundaries that racialization inscribes in everyday school life (Martínez‑Ariño et al. 2023). Second, diversity does not automatically translate into intercultural relations; interethnic friendship depends on security of recognition—classroom climates and adult practices that actively name and counter misrecognition (Honneth 1995; Martínez‑Ariño et al. 2023). Third, in post‑compulsory contexts (upper‑secondary, VET, university), expanded choice enables agency in peer selection: many participants report forming sustaining friendships where they can “be fully themselves,” reframing school as a space for mutual recognition rather than mere survival (Branje et al. 2021). Fourth, we conceptualize friendship as an infrastructure that supports educational engagement, resilience, and participation; yet it cannot compensate for systemic inequities without institutional change, particularly in teacher practices and school‑family‑community partnerships (Khalfaoui et al. 2020).

We argue that friendship narratives are powerful forms of practitioner‑relevant knowledge that challenge the dominance of de‑contextualized metrics. Answering the call of ECER 2026 to rethink how, by whom, and for whom educational knowledge is produced and used in a context of contested truth regimes, and policy pressures. Rather than treating friendship as anecdote, we argue that friendship, should be treated as a core condition for equitable schooling, where teachers and educational professionals can either undermine or nurture through everyday practices (Ahmed 2004; Honneth 1995).

Ultimately, this contribution reframes friendship as a relational element for democratizing school life: it can either intensify exclusion or seed more just forms of cohabitation (Martínez‑Ariño et al. 2023). By foregrounding the voices of racialized girls, we propose practical implications for networks of educators, families, and communities and, offer a methodology for producing trustworthy, situated knowledge capable of guiding action without sacrificing complexity or care (Khalfaoui et al. 2020).