Abstract
This study presents a qualitative investigation of how Muslim Moroccan and Pakistani female immigrants living in Italy conceptualize their cultural identity. Ten Moroccan and 10 Pakistani (adolescent and adult) women were interviewed through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The interviewees expressed a strong attachment to their culture of origin: their religion is a crucial aspect of their identity, along with certain cultural rules and traditional values. At the same time, both Moroccan and Pakistani participants were ambivalent toward and experienced difficulties in developing a connection to the host country, although the two groups exhibit their lack of connection to their host country in different ways: Moroccans’ self-representation is marked by a sense of foreignness and by a lack of an emotional connection with places where they are living while Pakistanis tend to express cultural distance and conflict with the host culture’s values. For both the Moroccan and Pakistani groups, the challenge of integration and biculturalism seems demanding in the Italian context and is marked by a deep feeling of emptiness, a lack of an emotional bond with the new country, and a strong cultural ambivalence. Finally, narrative themes are articulated across four interrelated dimensions (cultural, religious, gendered, spatial), revealing interesting differences based on national origin and generation.
Highlights
In Europe, as in countries with a longer history of immigration such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Muslims constitute a growing new immigrant population from a wide range of African and Middle Eastern countries
As found in previous explorations of the same topic, the self-description of Moroccan and Pakistani immigrants emerged as a complex association of four different and interrelated key social dimensions — cultural, gender, religious, and spatial — (Berry et al, 2006; Fried, 2000; Phinney, 1990)
Corresponding to recent international studies (Campbell & McLean, 2003; Fried, 2000; Oppedal & Røysamb, 2007; Sabatier, 2008; Stevens et al, 2004, 2007b; Vedder et al, 2007), our results present an image of immigrants who express—though in different ways — a strong attachment to their culture of origin as well as a struggle to build a link with their host country or culture
Summary
In Europe, as in countries with a longer history of immigration such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Muslims constitute a growing new immigrant population from a wide range of African and Middle Eastern countries. 13), leading to some long-term psychological and social adaptations of an individual or group. In this process, cultural identity, considered as a multidimensional construct linked to a sense of self as a member of one or more groups (e.g., Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006), has been frequently analysed both in young and adult immigrants. Several authors have pointed out that the negotiation and interplay among religious, cultural, ethnic, and national dimensions of identity represent a complex challenge, one that is generally considered more demanding for second-generation children of immigrants than for the firstgeneration immigrants (Berry et al, 2006; Britto & Amer, 2007; Phinney, 1990; Stuart, Ward, & Adam, 2010). Children of immigrants struggle with combining loyalty with cultural and religious heritage and host society values earlier in their developmental and socialization process than do their adult counterparts
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