Crescere nella migrazione. Generi e sessualità fra gli adolescenti di origine straniera

Abstract

How do the children of immigrants define and represent themselves in the Italian society? How do they build and negotiate their own subjectivity of women/men and experience their sexual bodies in adolescence? In what way their everyday experiences are different from (or similar to) those of Italian teenagers?Grounded on an ethnographic work carried out in the context of Bologna and surrounding area, the paper investigates the symbolic construction of gender and sexuality among the teenagers of foreign origin. Exploring their multiple biographical trajectories, the research reveals a pattern of resources, subjective desires, imaginaries largely shared with the younger generations, but also their multiple attempts to negotiate and challenge both parent’s expectations and Italian society’s request of “assimilation”. Giving voices to the children of immigrants, the empirical data helps us to deconstruct, through the lens of sexuality, gender and bodily practices, essentialist ideas and stereotypical representations attached to the so-called second generations as well as to discuss the role play by structural inequalities and exclusionary processes in shaping their experience of being adolescents.

Keywords

• teenage immigrants
• sexuality
• bodies
• genders
• generations