Growing up abroad: Italian and Romanian migrants’ partial transitions to adulthood

ABSTRACT

Drawing on in-depth interviews with young Italians and Romanians, representing two of the largest “old” and “new” European populations in Britain, this paper examines migrants’ experiences in the spheres of work, family and “home”, and their narratives of “growing up” abroad, to enhance our understanding of youth transitions to adulthood in the context of intra-EU migration. Contrary to accounts that see migration as a strategy to either delay or advance adulthood, our analysis offers a more complex picture, showing how migration may unevenly affect transitions to adulthood, advancing some, and delaying others. Furthermore, we extend debates around the meaning of adulthood, illustrating the central role migration plays in generating feelings of “growing up”, even when traditional markers of adulthood are absent, and how these are negotiated transnationally in relation to home-based peers, in ways that combine old and new understandings of adulthood.

KEYWORDS:

• Coming of age
• intra-EU mobility
• Italian migration
• Romanian migration
• transnational relationships
• youth transitions

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all participants, whose names have been changed for anonymity purposes. We also thank Dr Simone Varriale and the Ethnic and Racial Studies reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, “YMOBILITY” Project [grant number 649491].