Becoming women: awareness of migration and double loyalty

Abstract

"Based on two case studies of adolescent daughters of migrant and mixed families in Bavaria (Germany) and in Veneto (Italy), the paper aims to study how the daughters solve the conflicting interactions between the contents of the transmission and of the socialization. Focused mostly on gendered interactions and on a sense of belonging, the reflection investigates if and how structural elements (e.g.: family configuration, national context and migration trajectories of parents) impact on continuity and discontinuity in passing on values and other sets of information. The observation of 'status passages' and 'socio-ecological transitions' in and between private and public spheres thanks to the analysis of life histories are suitable to grasp the specific effects of handing down and its interaction with the socialization over generations. This approach entails the articulation of 'time' (namely the interplay between past and present) and 'space' (namely the private and public spheres) allowing retracing the outline of the 'generational work' that each family performs consciously and unconsciously. In different geographical and socio-cultural contexts as well as in different family patterns, parenting and adolescent dynamics reveal common features. By pointing out the restructuration that adolescence imposes in life courses, we show that it is the meaning given to the parental experience of migration that entails specific form of 'loyalty' due to emotional and juridical (de)nationalized belonging, as well as to previous experiences of socialization and discrimination. The originality of the reflection is connected to the patterns of the families compared. The authors widen the concept of migration classically employed in academia introducing the innovative concept of 'migration of contact'." (author's abstract)