Between Justice and Gift: The Voluntary Guardianship of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors in Italy

In Italy, the role of the voluntary legal guardian for unaccompanied foreign minors was introduced by Law no. 47 of 7 April 2017 (the so-called Zampa Law). The article is positioned within the studies on voluntary guardianship, which have explored various aspects of this emerging social role, adopting a hermeneutic focus not yet addressed: it asks whether the choice of voluntary guardians can or cannot be interpreted through the theoretical model of the gift, and what ambiguities, risks and opportunities come into play once the activity of guardianship is analyzed from this perspective. In the hypothesis, the choice made by voluntary guardians could be traced back to the model of the gift to strangers—not to a generalized stranger (as, for example, in blood donation) but to a specific individual. The social action of voluntary guardians could therefore risk the so-called perverse effect of acts of charity: the impossibility of completing the Maussian cycle through reciprocation may generate frustration and hostility in the recipient. However, since the gift, in this case, is directed by an adult towards a minor, the relationship could end up resembling a form of social parenthood which, like biological parenthood, entails a particular kind of unbalanced and deferred reciprocity, related to the following generations. We shall therefore investigate whether it is possible to apply the category of the gift to the choice of voluntary guardianship, and if so, what is the most suitable variant to interpret it (gift to strangers, parental gift, etc.) and with what consequences. The research will attempt to offer answers based on qualitative research methods—30 semi-structured interviews with privileged witnesses and 2 focus groups, from 2019 to 2026, in Calabria, Sicily, Latium and Tuscany. Drawing on the results, we will show that applying the “gift model” to the work of volunteer guardians is not straightforward, prompting the interviewees to make distinctions and, at times, express opposition. The resulting picture is multifaceted, highlighting little-explored aspects of this social role, such as issues related to the mutual expectations of guardians and minors.