Climbing walls, making bridges: children of immigrants’ identity negotiations through capoeira and parkour in Turin

Abstract

Capoeira and parkour are two different body practices which have gained worldwide attention in urban settings in the last few decades. The following paper will explore how capoeira and parkour relate to the construction of identity paths amongst children of immigrants between 12 and 20 in Turin, Italy. It will do so by looking at how such practices are used by young men of migrant origin to negotiate and perform narratives of self-worth, belonging and recognition within marginalising and excluding urban environments. This study acknowledges that social identifications are created, negotiated and (re)produced through bodily and spatial means and within networks of power relations. Following this premise, the insights proposed in this paper suggest that the ambivalent and fluid use of bodies and spaces implied by capoeira and parkour can represent a meaningful lens to understand the embodied and spatial identity negotiations enacted by participants in their daily lives. This theoretical perspective will illuminate the place that active bodies, spaces and leisure practices take in the negotiation of social identities, and dynamics of inclusion/exclusion, enacted by youth of migrant origin within early 21st century Turin cityscape.

Urban nature and transnational lives

“…The city centre is quiet on Sundays, ‘the worst’, and staying indoors in his house makes him feel ‘annoyed’ and ‘lonely’. We get a sense here of how relations in outdoor public spaces are important for a sense of ‘self‐worth, belonging and self‐location’ for young male migrants in particular 4 (De Martini Ugolotti, 2015, p. 26). Relational aspects of transnational connection seem weaker for participants at this stage of their migration history, or may be just too hard to talk about.…”

‘Pra homem, menino e mulher’? Problematizing the gender inclusivity discourse in capoeira

“…The acknowledgment and recognition of these perspectives can thus 'make it possible to think about and give expression to something as possible which hitherto had been inconceivable' (Woodward, 2014: 243). Moreover, these perspectives are even more crucial to address now as researchers are documenting the relevance and ongoing (re)definition of the discipline in diasporic and transnational contexts (see Delamont et al, 2017;Joseph, 2012;De Martini Ugolotti, 2015).…”

“…capoeira and parkour) in contexts of urban marginality (De Martini Ugolotti, 2015;De Martini Ugolotti and Moyer, 2016). However, for this paper he drew on 17 years of experience learning and teaching capoeira in diverse European countries.…”

Parkour, counter-conducts and the government of difference in post-industrial Turin

“…Contrary to common readings that described traceurs as (predominantly white, male, middle-class) urban flaneurs consciously subverting the rules and boundaries of the capitalist city (Daskalaki et al 2008;Atkinson 2009; Bavinton 2011), the disenfranchised and often post-migrant young men in this study described their engagement with parkour as having, at least in origin, no other rationale than a free opportunity for leisure and socialisation. Nevertheless, the frictions and conflicts that often accompanied the participants' unexpected and irreverent practice of parkour in public spaces made manifest and negotiated the invisible power relations defining what constitutes the public, how it should be used and by whom in Turin's regenerating cityscape (De Martini Ugolotti, 2015;De Martini Ugolotti and Moyer, 2016). Rather than through a "purely negative act of disobedience" (Foucault 2007(Foucault [1978, or an explicit and organised political claim, these negotiations centred on physical practices that enabled the participants to form and transform their sense of self and self-worth as they re-created the contours of the city :…”