“We were like them”: Intersecting Identities and Mediators' Intercultural Communication in a Municipal Service

The main aim of this article is to present an intercultural communication study conducted in a municipal service, which focuses on how cultural mediators make sense of their work with migrants, being both representatives of an Italian institution as well as former foreigners/migrants themselves: their shared everyday context, common destiny and their understanding of users’ experiences. The study, on the whole, underlines how cultural mediators use personal aspects of their own lives to build a “bridge” between the migrant users and the institutions they represent, thus lessening the gap between migrants' past experience and their present lives.