IL MONDO SOCIALE DEI GENITORI MIGRANTI DELL'ALBANIA E DEI LORO FIGLI: TRASFORMAZIONI A CONFRONTO TRA VERONA E BIRMINGHAM

The social world of Albanian migrant parents and their children: transformations to compare between Verona and Birmingham The theoretical approaches which I intend to adopt regarding migration over the last decade in Europe, derive from theories that have been developed in North America. Studies related to the first and second generation migrants in Europe refer at least to three of them: a) an examination of the opportunities that national contexts provide in terms of inclusion and social mobility; b) the notion of blurred and bright boundaries that has been developed by Richard Alba (2005), who argues that different forms of boundaries in terms of nationality, religion, “race” and language influence the process of identity formation of the first and second generations c) the analysis of transnational phenomena. The nature and importance of the first generation links with the home country impact the attitudes and the way in which the second generation relate to the sending country of their parents. Such phenomena are complex and discontinuous. This is due to several factors which determine the relevance of the phenomenon itself and its role in the identity formation of migrants. The tracing of transnational practices, the singling out of the ways in which they occur, description of ensuing cultural reproduction would allow me to grasp the social transformations to which migrant parents and their children are inevitably subject. I intend to follow the theoretical lines described above focusing mainly on situations and events in which Albanian migrant parents and their children are involved . In addition, the approach concerns two different European contexts towards which there was a significant flux of Albanian migration after the Nineties, Birmingham in Britain and Verona in Italy. The intent is to broaden knowledge on the phenomenon of migration through comparison, tracking differences and similarities in migration processes, identifying issues of socio-cultural relevance and analyzing their effects.