Digitalization and migrant parental engagement in primary schools: a challenge or an opportunity?
Public talk with Dr. Irene Landini
27.01.2026
TUESDAY, 27.01.2026, 4 – 6 pm (ct)
Sociology Department
Konradstr. 6, 80801 München, Room 308
Dr. Irene Landini, MSCA Postdoctoral fellow, Faculty of Social Science, University of Antwerp, currently LMU Munich, Chair. Prof. Villa Braslavsky (Sociology & Gender Studies)
This research explores how the growing reliance on digital technologies in primary schools shapes parental engagement, particularly parent-teacher communication, among mothers with a migratory background, in the post-pandemic period. Situated within the literature on migrant parental engagement in European educational contexts, the research calls into question the tendency of existing studies to focus on individual ‘deficits’, such as digital skills or socioeconomic and cultural capital, as the main factors shaping engagement and parent-teacher communication. Drawing on qualitative research in primary schools in Antwerp (in the Flemish part of Belgium) and Trento (in North-East Italy), the study reveals instead how policy frameworks, institutional power relations, and meso-level school dynamics shape mothers’ practices and uses of digital communication. In doing so, the findings foreground migrant mothers’ agency, challenging portrayals of them as passive recipients of technological change.