‘As a rice plant in a wheat field’: identity negotiation among children of Chinese immigrants

Abstract

This work presents an overview of the results of a 2003/4 research project funded by the Italian Ministry of Welfare. The goal of the project was to provide some insight into the process of identity construction among children of immigrants in Italy. Being in charge of the Chinese case study, I carried out 8 months of fieldwork among a group of Chinese teenagers in Rome. The results show how the young Chinese in Italy maintain a strong awareness of their ethnic belonging. The Italian environment is perceived as a collection of opportunities: tools that can be exploited to pursue an ideal of young Chinese overseas at one time deeply attached to the culture of origin but also anti-traditional.

Keywords:

• Second generation
• Chinese diaspora
• shadowing
• Chineseness

Notes

On the history of Chinese presence in Italy up to the 1990s see, among others, Farina et al. (1997), then a number of sources each related to different areas in Italy.

Roughly 80 per cent of a total of 186,522 individuals (official projection for year 2007; Caritas, Migrantes 2008).

Ceccagno (2004a) provides official figures from Confartigianato, according to which 34.38 per cent of small businesses run by immigrants originating from non-European countries are owned by Chinese nationals (69 per cent in the textile/clothing sector).

Data locally available from the Italian Chamber of Commerce.

For example, according to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 1999 there were 592 young Chinese aged 6–14 years who rejoined with their family, while in the same year only seven young Chinese aged 0–5 years rejoined with their family in Italy.

Similar issues are reported about young Chinese in Germany in Leung (2003).

On the role of overseas Chinese in building a transnational symbolic universe of ‘cultural China’ see Ang (2001) and Tu (1994).