Maurizio Ambrosini, university of Milan, editor of the journal “Mondi migranti”

Second generations. Challenges, paths,

resources of young people of immigrant origin

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 assimilation2) 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

- +

-CulturalAssimilation +

Marginalintegration

Selectiveintegration

Apparentintegration

Classic linearintegration

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

Non conflictual relationship

Youth identity The adolescents (17,5%)

The integrated (22,6%)

Ethnic identity

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