Abstract
In Sicily, the increasing presence of immigrants has given the society an important challenge which has also required the adoption of an intercultural view and intervention designed to deepen the needs of migrants. Immigrants living in Sicily are distributed above all in coastal areas. The most numerous migrant communities come from Romania, Tunisia and Morocco. In the province of Trapani, the presence of foreigners reflects the regional distribution with migrants from Romania, Tunisia and Morocco. However, a different distribution of the population has been recorded in Mazara del Vallo, a small town in the province of Trapani, where a Tunisian community justifies the prevalence of Tunisians (77.7%) above any other group of immigrants living in the city. The presence of the Tunisian community in Mazara Del Vallo for over forty years allows us to identify the variety in needs between first generation and second generation migrants. Particularly, this study explores the issue of redefining one’s personal identity in both I and II generation migrants and the differences that emerge between them through the text analysis of interviews conducted on 40 immigrants, 20 pertaining to first generation migrants and the remaining 20 belonging to the second generation: parents and children, all members of the Tunisian community of Mazara del Vallo. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s1p380
Highlights
The study of the reasons why immigrants require a residence permit is an investigation necessary to understand the migration phenomenon and to identify future trends
To observe an important central theme of identity in all texts that migrants produced during interviews and to observe some differences according to variables we chose for this study
This is, the variable which seems to justify the difference among interview scripts: while in I generation migrants scripts, we can read more references pertaining to cultural contexts, in II generation scripts, the reference to this matrix becomes softer, doubts multiply, contradictions find a new space and, according to the clinical literature, the interrogation about their own identity becomes stronger and more problematic
Summary
The study of the reasons why immigrants require a residence permit is an investigation necessary to understand the migration phenomenon and to identify future trends. The presence of their children represents an uncertainty: the risk of a fracture regarding the past, certainties and traditional knowledge This affects the perception of one's identity and its redefining process because the entire psychic inheritance dimension is strongly revisited within permanent migration projects. As stated by De Martino (1977), identity refers to the feeling to exist as a people with common sense in a context with sense, migration projects sedentary, permanently subtracting the first generation migrants coming to the community, expose them to the double risk of ontological "lost in the world" (crisis of presence) or "lose the world" (cultural apocalypse) (De Martino, 1977). A Tunisian community has been established for over forty year justifying the prevalence of Tunisians (77.7%) above any other group of immigrants living in the city
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