I figli degli immigrati come categoria sociologica

Abstract

The article argues that children of immigrants have been mostly conceptualized as representatives of a “people”. It tries to demonstrate that this “national-cultural” perspective is a relatively coherent framework, influencing what are assumed to be the prime areas of interest, what is assumed to lie inside and outside the field of study, what are imagined to be the sociological mechanisms in play, as well as decisions about how to construct samples and analyse data. However fruitful this long-standing traditional framework has been, it also has its limits: it tends to constitute the study of the children of immigrants (and of first generation immigrants themselves) as an area of special study, rather isolated from the sociological mainstream, with incidental, rather than intrinsic, connections to the study of social stratification. The article argues that it would be fruitful to give greater attention to the sociological consequences of migration itself – the way families and social networks are systematically reorganized by geographical moves. It gives examples to show that this reorganization of social relations has major sociological consequences also for children of migrants, shaping the form relations take in the family, the neighbourhoods they grow up in, the schools they go to, the friendships they form – and thus also their access to information regarding school and opportunities in the labour market, the “culture” young people form locally. A focus on the way the “migration process”, rather than ethnic/national identity shapes social trajectories provides an alternative focus for understanding children of immigrants as a sociological category.