Working Paper No. 05/2009
UCL Anthropology
Working Papers Series
Department of
Anthropology
University College London
14 Taviton Street,
London
WC1H 0BW, U.K.
ISSN
1759-6688
Editorial Board: Sara Randall, Martin
Holbraad
Working Paper No. 05/2009
Published online
November 27, 2009
© Copyright rests with the authors
LEGAL, SOCIAL AND INTIMATE BELONGING: MOROCCAN AND
ALBANIAN SECOND GENERATION MIGRANTS IN ITALY
ALICE ELLIOT
Dissertation submitted in 2008 for the MRes Anthropology
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ABSTRACT
The paper explores how
second generation youths in Italy are creating and re-elaborating their life
plans, sense of identity and belonging amidst the many pressures, influences and
legal/social barriers they encounter in their daily lives. Following recent
anthropological theorisations of identity and belonging, the project aims to
highlight the importance of acknowledging the many, interrelated and
multilayered, factors which impinge on second generations' lives and identity
formation and argues how classical theories of integration - conceptualised as a
straight line which runs from "parents' culture" to "host country's culture" -
are theoretically inadequate. The paper integrates the existing literature on
second generation migrants with fieldwork conducted in northern Italy during the
summer months of 2008 with young adults of Albanian and Moroccan origin and
discusses sense of belonging and identity formation with reference to legal and
social exclusion and the intimate spheres of sexuality and male-female
relationships highlighting how Italy's specific political, legal and social
context needs to be seen as central to immigrants' children's identity formation
and life trajectories.
