Collaborative Methods and Tools in the Training of Social Workers in the Reception of Minor and Adult Migrants

Tarsia describes how the combined use of a participatory and collaborative research technique of the world café, together with storytelling, transformed part of the fieldwork into a setting for training social workers employed in secondary-reception projects for adults and minors seeking asylum, and refugees in southern Italy. The description of the process that led to the establishment of the “participatory and situated teaching and research boards” within the framework of a research project carried out at the University of Messina, made it possible to understand the ways in which the conduct of the fieldwork and the researchers’ methodological choices made it possible to co-construct a symbolic and physical space that responded to the training needs of the operators. Finally, there is an explanation as some of the features that might be useful in observing the way in which research space can be experienced as potentially formative by the participants.