The Trotter open-air school, Milan (1922-1977): a city of youth or risky business?

This article inserts the concept of risk in the context of open-air schools and investigates its implications, capacities and limits. It is contended that applying at-risk labels to pupils who attended open-air schools is itself a risky business. The category to some extent constitutes an anomaly within most open-air schools' histories, as much of what it would come to denote, did not yet exist as such when these institutes arose and flourished. Moreover, the literature suggests that at-risk labels are often deployed, interpreted, negotiated and resisted by children and youth to whom they are applied. The article investigates that hypothesis by means of a case study of a Milanese open-air school called 'Trotter'. Studied in detail is its everyday educational practice before and after the Second World War. It is argued that open-air schools like 'Trotter' indeed (re)constructed children and youth in modes similar to those related to at-risk discourse, albeit in ambiguous and context-specific ways. Moreover, the article shows that institutes like 'Trotter' themselves put their target groups at risk, giving occasion to multiple forms of an at-risk paradox. Pupils of such a school particularly risked (but also resisted) being socially bracketed, stigmatized, institutionalized, abused and subjected to streaming.