Abstract:

Grounded on the anthropological perspective, this article deals with the issue of second generation in multicultural context of Bologna (Italy). The empirical basis to the paper is an ethnographic work conducted in a Youth Center, a welfare service committed to supporting and providing care to adolescents. Such ethnographic work provides an opportunity to examine the gap between the intercultural rhetoric, framing many institutional and political discourses, and the everyday discrimination and inequalities experienced by foreign teenagers who access the public welfare service. The focus on the concrete interactions between welfare workers and young people of migrant background allows to explore the social production of “boundaries” and “difference” within a welfare institution located in the Emilia-Romagna Region, perceived as one of the most “advanced” Italian region in the field of social politics. Thanks to ethnographic approach the paper examines, on the one hand, how some public discourses and common sense representations are embodied in the everyday work of welfare institutions and, on the other hand, how second generation experience and challenge some dominant essentialist discourse on “cultures”, “local traditions”, “identities” or strategically adopt them in order to get and negotiate resources and rights within a public service.

Keywords:

Migrant minorities, gender, identity, discrimination, diversity.