Transcript Diapositiva 1

Second generations.
Challenges, paths, resources of
young people of immigrant
origin
Maurizio Ambrosini, university of Milan, editor of the
journal “Mondi migranti”
Children of immigrants. Why are
they a crucial issue?
• Children of immigrants: why are we so interested in
their social integration?
• The issue of citizenship: the identity of the nation
and the social order
• the perception of social change and the anxiety of
assimilation
Who and how many are?
• The different profiles of the population
concerned: children born here, reunited at
various ages, left behind, children of mixed
unions….
• Today minors and young people of
immigrant origin living in Italy are more
than one million.
• more than half of them were born in Italy
Some Italian peculiarities
• The issue of citizenship
• Low knowledge of Italian language in the
world
• Recent beginning of the process
• Precariousness of living and housing
conditions
• Fluidity and unpredictability of the arrivals
• Subordinate integration and its
consequences
Between assimilation and discrimination
• Two big orientations:
1) Studies on attitudes and behaviours: the long
wave of assimilation
2) Studies on outcomes: discrimination and its
consequences
• The right to be similar and the right to be
different
Cultural assimilation and
economic integration
Economic integration
Cultural
Assimilation
Marginal
integration
Apparent
+ integration
+
Selective
integration
Classic linear
integration
Intermediary structures:
migrant families
 Reversal reunions and non conventional families
(broken, single parents families, step-families)
 Research of new balances and transmission of
identity
 Family as a dynamic space and a site of negotiation
 The relationship with the ethnic community and
the issue of respect
 The reversed perception of gender issues
A research study on adolescents and families
(Ismu-Caritas, 2009)
Conflictual
relationship
Youth identity
Ethnic identity
Non
conflictual
relationship
The adolescents The integrated
(17,5%)
(22,6%)
The rebels
(30,6%)
The
conservatives
(29,2%)
Intermediary structures: religious
institutions
• Immigrants’ religious institutions as sites where
cultural identity can be saved and education of
children can be better managed
• Religious institutions as sites of selective
integration
• The three R of religions: refuge, respect, resource
• A parallel process: conversions as a way of integration
• Muslims in Europe: are they a different case?
Intermediary institutions:
immigrant communities
Adolescents newly arrived as a group
at risk
Socialization of adolescents with
similar people: the issue of the
language, intimate communication
and the perception of external
society
Street gang?
 The research on the so called “street gang”:
the substitution of the family and the
research of support
 Sociability and mutual help
 From exclusion to pride: the reversal of the
stigma
• Experiences on the edge
Why the issue is important
• Because it transforms temporary immigrations
into permanent settlements
• Because it challenges the pattern of subordinate
integration
• Because it challenges the (asserted) ethnic
homogeneity of receiving countries
• Because it challenges the foundations of national
identity: it demands to talk of it looking at the
future and not at the past