Chinese immigrant youth identities and belonging in Prato, Italy: exploring the intersections between migration and youth studies

Abstract

This article explores the experiences of young people of Chinese background in Prato (Italy). Despite significant social exclusion, young Chinese develop a sense of belonging to Prato by creating local, translocal and transnational affiliations and interconnections. These relationships contribute to making an often overtly hostile local reality, liveable and meaningful. A central aim of this article is to examine the intersection between migration studies and youth studies. The former tend to focus on the processes of identity formation featuring ethnic background, hence the label ‘second generation’. In contrast, the latter tend to foreground age- and generation-specific practices of belonging that may extend beyond ethnic identification, hence the focus on ‘youth’. We argue that bringing migration and youth studies together – by complicating notions of home and host, migrant and local identity and belonging – helps us to better understand how young people are managing multiplicity and mobility (and situatedness and stasis/fixity).

KEYWORDS:

• young Chinese
• translocal
• belonging
• identity
• second-generation migrants
• Prato (Italy)

Acknowledgements

The present article is the outcome of joint and indivisible work by the authors; however, if for academic reasons individual authorship is to be assigned, Loretta Baldassar wrote the Introduction and the Method and Setting sections; Roberta Raffaetà wrote the Chinese Youth in Prato section and Anita Harris the Conclusion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roberta Raffaetà

ROBERTA RAFFAETÀ is Lecturer at Milan-Bicocca University

Loretta Baldassar

LORETTA BALDASSAR is Professor and Discipline Chair of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia

Anita Harris

ANITA HARRIS is Associate Professor of Sociology and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at Monash University