Children of Immigrants in a Globalized World A Generational Experience

Drawing on in-depth empirical case studies with youths from across the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and America, this book explores the lives of adolescent children of immigrants; those who, endowed with high cultural capital, are living the generational experience of growing up in a post-industrial, globalized and interconnected world. Although they face specific social constraints, this generation is also developing new skills such as managing ambivalence and multiple belongings, shifting codes and languages and claiming new forms of participation in social life. Accustomed to moving from one context to another, these children learn to use difference, equality, belonging, loyalty and identification in complex ways to help further their own personal opportunities. This book argues that one can view the diverse experiences of these young people more broadly to help shed light on the everyday social processes that are affecting contemporary youth as a whole.

ENZO COLOMBO is a professor of Sociology of Cultural Processes and Sociology of Intercultural Relations at the University of Milan, Italy

 

PAOLA REBUGHINI is a professor of Sociology and Sociology of Intercultural Communication at the University of Milan, Italy

Introduction
The Future of the Second Generation in a Globalized World
Framing Contexts and Actors
A Specific Generational Location
Multiple Belonging
Complex Identifications
Children of Immigrants in Search of Justness