‘Keeping two cultures together’: the binary construction of belonging in narratives of professionals on children’s cultural identity

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses interviews with Italian education professionals collected in the context of a European research project on the participation of children with a migration background, aiming to understand how interviewees’ construct children’s belonging and cultural identity. We also investigated whether these constructions change because of the gender of children involved in the narratives. We found that a narrative of incompleteness underpinned the professionals’ views. They described children’s trajectories as incomplete both because of their status as children and because of their perceived division in binary terms. Furthermore, through these narratives, the interviewees work out their own professional role identities and reconfirm established institutional discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• Belonging
• cultural identity
• narratives
• binarism
• children
• education professionals

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. With ‘community educators’ we refer to the educators working in reception centres.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [GA 822400].