“Here, There, in between, beyond…”: Identity Negotiation and Sense of Belonging among Southern Europeans in the UK and Germany

Abstract

Whilst most of the research on intra-EU mobility has mainly focused on the reasons behind young Southern Europeans leaving their home countries, and secondly on their experiences within the new context, little is known about their sense of belonging and identities. This article aims to fill this gap by exploring Italian and Spanish migrants’ social identity repositioning and the cultural change characterising their existential trajectories. Drawing on 69 semi-structured interviews with Italians and Spaniards living in London and Berlin, this article shows that the sense of belonging to one or more political communities and boundary work are related to individual experiences and can change due to structural eventualities such as the Brexit referendum. While identification with the host society is rare, attachment to the home country is quite common as a result of people’s everyday experiences. Cultural changes and European/cosmopolitan identification are linked to exposure to new environments and interaction with new cultures, mostly concerning those with previous mobility experience, as well as to a sentiment of non-acceptance in the UK. However, such categories are not rigid, but many times self-identification and attachments are rather blurred also due to the uncertainty around the duration of the mobility project. This makes individual factors (gender, age, family status, employment, education) that are often considered as determinants of identification patterns all but relevant.

Influence of Subjective/Objective Status and Possible Pathways of Young Migrants’ Life Satisfaction and Psychological Distress in China

“…As social participation is a key contributor to social inclusion ( Filia et al, 2019 ), migrants with higher social adaptation and less subjective social exclusion are closer to communities and neighborhoods, which plays a crucial role in migrants’ social participation in urban societies. Also, migrants with higher subjective SES are more likely to choose family reunions in cities, leading to a greater sense of city belonging ( Quassoli and Dimitriadis, 2019 ; Chen et al, 2020a ). In addition, it is reasonable to expect that migrants with higher levels of social adaptation would be socially and culturally more accepted by urban residents; thus, they are more likely to develop a sense of belonging in the city than other migrants ( Wang and Fan, 2012 ).…”

The Lived Experiences of Migration: An Introduction

“…Given the uncertain future of European integration, it is important to highlight the link between early experiences of international mobility and the formation of supra-national identifications. Our Southern European interviewees frequently had enriching academic experiences abroad as young adults prior to the observed migration moment in the interviews, and that made them appreciative of their European identity-a trend that was less visible among the Eastern European interviewees (see Coletto & Fullin, 2019;Fischer-Souan, 2019;Quassoli & Dimitriadis, 2019).…”

“…To further complicate the picture that the submissions in this thematic issue are painting, we need to consider the local context in which the immigrants have become embedded as it has an impact upon their sense of belonging and perceived class position. As we can see in Quassoli and Dimitriadis (2019), there is a very specific cosmopolitan identity to which migrants living in London or Berlin subscribe, and of which exceptionalism in relation to the UK and Germany they are very aware.…”

“…Identity reconfiguration and the emergence of a new a sense of belonging is another crucial aspect of the mobility process. Again, Quassoli and Dimitriadis (2019) explore in a comparative manner the identity formation among Italian and Spanish people living in London and Berlin. The authors propose three types of identity with which migrants end up: the development of a stronger cultural attachment to the country of origin; the internalization of the national culture of the host society, together with the development of a more critical vision of the society of origin than the one previously held; and a downplaying of the national cultural model and the development of cosmopolitan/European identity.…”

“…The latter identity can indeed be seen as the founding pillar of supranational political communities (Goulahsen, 2017). Thus, identity is hardly static, and research should allow for the formation of multiplicity of identities that can be further moulded by positive as well as negative interactions with the receiving and sending societies (Quassoli & Dimitriadis, 2019).…”