'As a rice plant in a wheat field': identity negotiation among children of Chinese immigrants

This work presents an overview of the results of a research project funded by the Italian Ministry of Welfare that I carried out between 2003 and 2004. The goal of the whole project was to provide some insight into the process of identity construction among children of immigrants in Italy. I was in charge of the Chinese case study. To investigate the factors that influence young Chinese who grow up in Italy in the negotiation of their identity, I carried out eight months of fieldwork among a group of Chinese teenagers in Rome. The methodology adopted was ethnographic fieldwork using an approach known as “shadowing” that roughly consists in selecting a very limited amount of subjects (one or two) and following them in all of their life contexts, “like a shadow” (Sclavi 1989). In my research I worked with two girls (13 and 15 YO) focusing on the three most salient social contexts of their daily life: the family, school and peer domains. Most of the observations took place in school and during leisure time with peers of Chinese origin. Interactions with the family had been relatively few due to the fact that the parents of the subjects worked until very late and the subjects themselves did not spend much time with them. The results show how the young Chinese in Italy maintain a strong awareness of their ethnic belonging. The Italian environment is perceived as a collection of opportunities: tools that can be exploited to pursue an ideal of young Chinese overseas at one time deeply attached to the culture of origin but also anti-traditional.