Ricerca delle identità, traiettorie interculturali e seconde generazioni. Seeking identity, intercultural trajectories and second generations

Young people of foreign origin feel themselves to be Italian: it is the gaze of others that makes them feel “strangers in their own homes”. A racist joke, an indiscreet question or even the indifferent glance of a stranger may be enough; their physical characteristics or a minority religious symbol will call up a difference which, in reality, does not exist. How much does their ethnic origin count among adolescents? What is fabricated, invented, freely discussed? One thing unites the life stories of many young people of non-Italian origin: their belonging to Italian society, even if they feels themselves to be fully integrated, is often the subject of renegotiation. Adolescence is often the time in which they must try out strategies to reaffirm their identity: the outcome of this process determines their future societal location. In this time of globalisation, it is a fact that young people are growing up in a much more multicultural setting that that of their parents and grandparents and hence contact with people from different cultural backgrounds is an everyday experience for them: what influences the formation of the identity - especially the cultural identity - of young people today? New Italians recount their need to negotiate various internal and external “colours” - i.e., to construct complex identities which cannot easily be simplified, and which vary in relation to their bilingualism, social standing and the migratory history of their parents. However, Anna Granata emphasizes that growing up among in such a multicultural context is more of a benefit than a problem: the work of deconstructing/constructing, adapting and interpreting results in a continuous reduction of diversities and dissonances and an ability to bring their own differences into play, which supersedes the mechanics of assimilation and rejection with original and very varied solutions, the outcome of a long process of approximation. An educational system marked by interculturalism must start from the recognition that adolescents, regardless of their origins and personal culture, must learn to “see with the eyes, the heart and the mind of others”, precisely in order to understand that even if individuals and groups “conceive their lives in different terms, they still share needs and desires” (Hanvey, 1982). This is a starting point, which promises to lay a solid foundation for dialogue, satisfactory conflict resolution for all stakeholders, the identification of shared values, and the concrete possibility of negotiating genuine conviviality.