Second Generation Immigrants on the Borders: A Bridge Generation between two Leisure World

The second generation could be defined as a “bridge generation” (Besozzi 2009: 42), because they are placed between the family migratory project and the chances of an autonomous and personal life path, that could act as door and hinge (Simmel 1909) for a connection/exchange between the two worlds: the host society and the migrant. The immigrant child is in fact an actor of the host society and has a strong intergenerational tie with his/her family at the same time, even though he/she lives in the in-between spaces through various forms of integration that do not always involve the parents and the native community. If leisure time is a new basic human need oriented to foster self-realization, the relative choices could be crucial in the social inclusion process of the children of immigrants. The sense of a double cultural belonging characterizes the process of construction of their social and personal identity: Immigrants’ children face the adolescent phases of personal and social malaise within a condition of cultural break. Consequently, being different or equal to their peers or their parents could mark this process in a positive or negative way. Looking, on the one hand, to the generational dissonance (Zhou 1997: 995) and, on the other hand, to the adolescents’ natural need to belong to a group of peers, I aim at analyzing material and symbolic consumption and uses, friendships, cultural and religious traditions of immigrant children compared to those of their parents and the Italian children, according to qualitative and quantitative data in Catania.