Minori a Napoli tra globale e locale: Voci e autorappresentazioni dopo Gomorra

The premise of this article is that there exists no Italian national model of childhood, but a plurality of childhoods whose terms of reference are the local and the global. I look at Naples as a ‘case study’ that illuminates issues brought about by globalisation, notably:
1.The blurring of the traditional distinction between the child as a vulnerable, malleable, and ‘becoming’ individual and the complete and stable adult ‘being’.
2.The different effects of globalisation on childhood in Western and Southern societies. Naples permits the coexistence of the new (Western) independent, internet user, consumer child who takes charge of its own development and the (Southern) marginalised and occasionally almost non-human child.
I examine a number of Neapolitan narratives from the mid-1990s to today that represent children from the deprived, crime- and drug-ridden Neapolitan peripheries. I contend that Roberto Saviano’s Gomorra (2006) marked a switch from fictional representations of doomed children to children’s own factual self-representations which focus on acquisition of voice and agency by means of self-reflection and storytelling promoted in schools and community projects. My analysis of sample texts identifies a gradual process from creative adaptation to context, to empowerment and the ability to affect the living space and to make life changes.