06/12/2017 GTD Colloquium by Simone Castellani

When: Dec 6, 2017, from 15.30 to 17.30
Where: Attic – Grote Gracht 80-82, Maastricht University

The topic of this lecture is:
Facing the obligation to belong: transnational engagement and construction of identities among Ecuadorian migrants’ children in Spain and Italy

By Simone Castellani
University Institute of Lisbon (CIES-IUL)

Abstract

My study presents some insights from an ethnographic study from my PhD dissertation, which analyze the social-cultural insertion of the Ecuadorian migrants’ children who live in Seville (Spain) and Genoa (Italy). The research focused on the dynamics of reproduction and construction of identity in the local and trans-local contexts in which the subjects participated. The study was conducted between 2008 and 2012 in two neighborhoods in Genoa and Seville and several localities in Ecuador, following an ethnographic methodological approach. The participant observation was carried out within secondary schools and places where teenagers spend their free time. Furthermore, more than one hundred in-depth interviews were conducted with Ecuadorian migrant children (aged 13-18), some parents, teachers and social workers. First, the findings indicate the active roles played by the Ecuadorian migrants’ children for maintaining the transnational ties within their trans-local households and the Ecuadorian diaspora. Secondly, it identifies the tool of tactics which these subjects set up in order to shape a Latino identification that marks the intergenerational difference from their parents. Further, this supra-ethnic identification allows migrants’ children to establish a distance with the Nation-State definitions of the country of origin and destination that attempt to materially and symbolically appropriate/control their social existences.

Simone Castellani is postdoctoral research fellow at the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE_IUL) carrying out a project on the new Portuguese migrations toward Germany. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology (University of Seville, Spain) and in Migration and Intercultural Processes (University of Genoa, Italy). He was guest lecturer at the University of Bielefeld (Germany) and visiting fellow and at the CONICET (Argentina), University of Santa Caterina (Brazil), University of Freiburg (Germany), Wellesley College (US), FLACSO-Ecuador and University of Sussex (UK). His topics of research are related with the international migratory processes. Specifically, he has studied the Latino American migration flows toward Europe, paying particular attention to the so-called second generation, and the new Southern European migration flows toward Germany during the last economic recession. This year he joined the UPWEB-NORFACE project team which focuses on the practices of welfare bricolage in contexts marked by high super-diversity. Further, he collaborates with the Global Social Protection project, leaded by the Transnational Studies Initiative at the University of Harvard, which investigate transnational social protection focusing on the access to the health care of Ecuadorian migrants in US, Italy, Spain and Ecuador.

Last publication: with Lagomarsino, F. (2016) “The unseen protagonists. Ecuadorians’ daughters between Ecuador and Southern Europe”, Social Identities, 22(3): 291-306.