Abstract
This chapter deals with the process of migrant categorization in South Tyrol. Sub-national governmentality—as in the case of an entity like the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol—may favor different configurations of migration, reproduction and identity, particularly when these three elements have all been historical sites of conflict and contestation. The policies the Provincial government places in motion targeting contemporary immigrants and their children cannot be separated from other biopolitical aspects that regard the relations among the protected linguistic minorities (German and Ladin-speaking) and the Italian language group present in the territory. The discussion here is based on data collected as part of anthropological research regarding the category of ‘foreign pupils’ in the South Tyrolean school system: the analysis of material from Provincial Council session minutes, media representations and the special provincial statistics office, ethnographic research in some South Tyrolean schools and in the broader (Bourdieuian) field of migration. Within this field, schooling is a strategic site for processes of social reproduction, and therefore of particular interest for thinking about migrant incorporation. In this context, migrants and their children become an ambivalent object of contention that tends to follow extant lines of self-essentialization.