Beyond Chinatown was a project financed with EIF (European Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals) funds, carried out by a group of researchers, workers and artists, together with Sino-Italian young people. It was designed to promote the inclusion and participation of young Chinese people and families living in Milan. Codici was the leading partner with Associazione Associna, Fondazione Monserrate and the Ufficio Stranieri del Comune di Milano.

The project was mainly focused on the learning of the Italian language (L2) as a tool of empowerment for young people of Chinese origin, with particular attention to the most vulnerable member of the population. To this end, Beyond Chinatown offered Italian language courses and orientation courses on the use of services. In addition, it promoted a peer research course and a multimedia narrative workshop to produce cultural video outputs to strengthen social participation, aggregation, and discussion between Sino-Italian and reunited Chinese youth. The workshop narrated the experiences of those young people who moved from China as teenagers to join their families in Italy. The group of 10 young people (who had arrived in Italy aged between 12 and 19 and joined the project when aged between 17 and 20), accompanied by trainers, mediators and filmmakers, gathered stories of other young Chinese people and told them in the video “Come me” (Like me).

Photo ☉☉ Antje Peters