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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


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.