Facilitation of young migrants’ agency in policy lab meeting interactions: a case analysis in an Italian city

Policy Labs are initiatives promoted to improve citizens' participation in the elaboration of institutional policies on specific themes. Policy labs involve the collaboration of interested citizens, specialized stakeholders, and decision-makers, coordinated by at least two facilitators in plenary sessions and small group workshops. Policy Labs can be considered a type of mini-public that aims to enhance deliberative democracy. This paper investigates a European project that implemented Policy Labs in six cities with the aim of supporting migrants' participation in enhancing local policy-making. The study focused on the facilitation of Policy Lab meetings, held in the city of Modena (Italy), examining the degree to which facilitators supported young migrants' active participation. The analysis is based on video-recordings, interviews, and focus groups. This analysis illustrates that some facilitative actions were helpful in supporting migrants' proposals and narratives of their personal cultural trajectories. It also demonstrates some side-effects of facilitation in terms of hierarchical relationships and knowledge distribution. We discuss the theoretical implications for facilitating mini-publics and provide suggestions to improve the facilitation of Policy Labs and similar efforts.