Crafting identities in a multinational context: evidence from Catalonia

Abstract

AbstractThe nationalist messages that family and school transmit are very often concurrent, making it difficult to measure their independent impact on individuals. In order to separate out the leverage of these two agents of socialisation, this article focuses on a case study in which such concurrence cannot be taken for granted: Catalonia. The article exploits variation in parents' national identification, resulting from the presence of a population born in other regions of Spain outside Catalonia, to tease out the effect of both parents and Catalan school in crafting individuals' identification. The results, which draw on the analysis of a household survey, suggest that more years of schooling makes more likely that individuals develop a dual identity; however, parents' attachment to Catalonia is key in fostering an exclusive identification with Catalonia. Results also suggest that residence in neighbourhoods in which the proportion of natives and immigrants from other regions of Spain favours contact between children from different identity backgrounds is decisive in promoting a more Catalan‐oriented identification between second generations.