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ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the multiple dimensions in the identity constructions of the daughters of the Muslim migrations to Italy. It focuses on the transformations in the way girls and young women relate to religion, in the transition from the generation of mothers, who emigrated from countries with a Muslim majority, to the generation of daughters, who grow up in a European context where Islam is a minority religion. It discusses ‘transmissions’, ‘translations’ and ‘betrayals’ in the migration experience, from a standpoint which highlights the specificities of gender and of generation. The article is based on an intersectional analysis of biographical accounts by Muslim girls and young women of Bengali and Moroccan origin who were born and/or grew up in Italy. Intersecting religious identity with other identity lines such as national belonging (to the parents’ country of origin and to the country where they were born or grew up), gender, class, color and age, multiple reactions and positions emerged. In this context, the religious dimension inherited/experienced/reinvented/called into question by the daughters of migrations appeared to be in constant evolution. Indeed, the stories contained herein of young Muslims tell of the emergence of European Islam.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Renata Pepicelli is lecturer of “Mediterranean Studies” at LUISS Guido Carli and “The Mediterranean World” at the American University of Rome. Her research focuses on the social history of the MENA region, with a special emphasis on gender, youth, migrations and Islamist movements. Her main books are Il velo nell’Islam. Storia, politica, estetica [The headscarf and Islam. History, politics and esthetics] (Carocci, 2012; Finnish translation, 2014); Femminismo islamico. Corano, diritti, riforme [Islamic, feminism. Quran, rights, reforms] (Carocci, 2010). Recently she co-edited the volume Giovani musulmane in Italia. Percorsi biografici e pratiche quotidiane [Young muslim women in Italy] (Il Mulino 2015).
Notes
1. This paper is based on the results of research funded by the ‘Forum per i Problemi della Pace e della Guerra’. It is part of a broader and comparative project on second-generation young Muslim women in Italy and gender citizenship. An earlier version of this work was published in Italian: Pepicelli (Citation2015).
2. In Italy, opinion is not unanimous on the terminology used to refer to the young children of migrant parents. ‘Second generation’ is the expression most commonly used, also by some young people for self-representation in public debate. Consider, for example, the ‘G2-Seconde Generazioni’ network. However, this term does not seem to reflect fully the complexity of the phenomenon, as it risks emphasizing the migratory experience as an indelible feature of the biographies, without considering that some youth were born in Italy and, therefore, never emigrated from any country. Here, preference has been given to the expression ‘sons and daughters of migrations’ to indicate, on the one hand, the migratory experience their parents underwent and transmitted and, on the other, to underline how the migration process is in constant flux and has not necessarily been concluded, being able to produce new migrations and movements towards other parts of the world in the future.
3. Parallel with the emergence of European Islam, individual national versions of Islam are becoming established, expressions of different migratory stories, different policies governing citizenship and differences in the way of declining concepts such as secularism, laicism and religious freedom in each country. It is, therefore, easy to observe how French Islam appears different from Italian Islam.
4. All the young women involved in this research project defined themselves as Muslims, not only because they grew up in Muslim families, but also through personal choice. However, there is no agreement on what it means to be a Muslim and in particular a ‘good Muslim’. Of the young women interviewed, there were those who presented a profile of ‘cultural Muslim’, in which Muslim identity essentially only refers to a cultural background, and those whose profile was of a practicing Muslim. The young women interviewed are identified with pseudonyms.
5. The girls of Bengali origin who were involved in this research project were between 16 and 20, with a prevalence of those between 16 and 18, while the age of those of Moroccan origin ranges from 16 to 28, with a prevalence of those between the ages of 23 to 25. The specificity of age of those interviewed evidences the differing stages of the identity constructions and different relationships of family dependence/independence/autonomy; these produce different phenomena of reaction, acceptance, resistance and individualization, which have been taken into account in the analysis. The age difference between the young interviewed of Bengali origin and those of Moroccan origin depends on the specificity of the migratory paths. While the numbers of the Moroccan community present in Italy since the 1980s are significant, and have now also reached the so-called ‘third generation’, Bengali immigration is chronologically more recent, starting in the 1990s and increasing in the first years of 2000.
6. About 1.7 million Muslim people live in Italy, making up 2.8% of the Italian population and 33.1% of the total number of foreigners (5,364,000). This estimate does not include undocumented migrants, naturalized immigrants and descendants of immigrant parents with Italian citizenship, nor Italians converted to Islam (a small but visible and well-organized group of about 60–70,000 people). The largest Muslim groups – if we count EU and non-EU countries – come from Morocco (525,000, of which 44.1% are women), Albania (503,000 – 47.8% women), Egypt (135,000 – 29.5% women), Bangladesh (128,000 – 28.4% women), Tunisia (120,000 – 36.5% women), Pakistan (106,000 – 32.3% women) and Senegal (98,000 – 26.5% women). Immigration from Muslim countries has largely been composed of men, especially during its first phase in the 1970s and 1980s; however, family reunification policies in the 1990s and 2000s led to an increase in arrivals of women. Nowadays there is more gender balance even if, as the numbers show, immigration from Muslim countries is still predominantly male. (Sources from Idos, quoted in Enar Citation2016).
7. The term ‘mosques’ used here refers to prayer halls mainly housed in apartments, basements and warehouses. For a general description of status of the places of Muslim worship in Italy, see Bombardieri (Citation2011).
8. In the city of Rome, the al-Huda Islamic Centre in the Centocelle quarter is particularly active. On Saturdays and Sundays, utilizing the premises of a state school not far from the mosque of the same name, courses in Arabization and religious training are offered to hundreds of young children of both sexes, mainly but not entirely to the children of Arab-speaking families.
9. The religious authorities which young women and men consider to be influential are globalized figures, not tied to specific territories, but popularized by the media through television and computers, such as Amr Khaled, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Tariq Ramadan.
10. We read on the association’s website www.giovanimusulmani.it: ‘G.M.I.’s activities aim to include young Muslims within the society through a process of “identity balancing” tied to the fact that young Muslims in Italy, often of immigrant backgrounds, straddle two cultures, two languages and two worlds […]. G.M.I. supports young Muslims in developing their Muslim and Italian identity in which their faith in belonging to Italy are joined and do not contradict each other.’ Founded in 2001, G.M.I. is considered close to the U.C.O.I.I. (Union of Islamic community organizations in Italy). For an analysis of G.M.I.’s activities, see Frisina (Citation2007).
11. Italian citizenship laws are among the last in Europe to be based on jus sanguinis, the hereditary factor, as the criterion for granting citizenship. In a country whose regulatory system recognizes the status of children of migration, and gives them a number of protections only until they come of age, this gives rise to questions and contradictions. Lacking citizenship when they turn 18 in some cases can force children of migration to ask for a residence permit to continue to reside in the country where they were born or raised. This reproduces discriminatory practices that make young people born and raised in Italy feel like foreigners.
12. Knowing Arabic cannot be taken for granted, as many know only spoken Moroccan Arabic.
13. To face the high housing costs, it is common practice in many Bengali families to live with another family or single individuals. Such practices affect the lives of the girls, who can feel limited in their movements inside the house on account of the presence of men who are not part of the family.
14. In the case of the Moroccan community, there is no record of such high concentrations in a single area and the strategies introduced to face the costs of the Rome real-estate market do not usually provide for the practice of cohabitation with strangers, but rather the temporary sharing with one’s relations, moving to the more suburban areas of the city; in certain cases, very rarely, the practice of squatting occurs.
15. The term bari can be translated as ‘house’, and corresponds to the physical and social space created by the union, in the same village or in the same quarter, of a number of households. Generally, the members of the residential groups which form a bari are related to each other through the male line.
16. The term hijab refers to a type of veil that covers the head and usually the neck, leaving the face uncovered, while the term niqab means a type of veil which covers the face as well. For the differences between veils, see Pepicelli (Citation2012).
17. The girls of Bengali origin mostly observe the principle of covering the body (although some of them, far from the watchful eyes of the mothers and fathers, from time to time wear clothes which leave their arms and legs uncovered, and wear bikinis on the beach, without their parents knowing); among the girls of Moroccan origin, on the other hand, there are various different positions held. Some wear the veil and some do not, following totally the styles and fashions of their non-Muslim contemporaries.
18. See the video of the project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZP8lVRFpFA and the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/progettoAisha/photos [Accessed 13 July 2016].