Rita Bichi

This article presents the main results of a research – commissioned by UNICEF, UNHCR and IOM – on the factors that facilitate or constrain the transition to adulthood of the unaccompanied and separated children. The research has highlighted, first of all, the artificiality of a distinction between “children” (UASC) and “adults” (UASC who turned 18) that does not take due account of the transitional process of becoming adults, the cultural, social and gender differences that affect this process and the vulnerabilities to which this category of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are exposed to...

The essay discusses the problem of operationally defining the concept of social distance. Specifically, on the basis of existing literature, attention is paid to the possibility of empirical data collection with regard to a peculiar dimension of social distance: subjects’ perception, i.e. the ways through which individuals recognize social distance in their social relations. The research process which is presented starts from an exploratory phase, where semi-structured interviews have been used. In a second phase, data collected have been transformed into a substantial number of categories that were later tested in order to make them part of a perceived social distance scale (PSDS).