‘Making the most of it …’: How young Romanians and Moroccans in north-eastern Italy use resources from their social networks

Abstract

The integration of young immigrants is a key issue in European societies. The article examines how Moroccan and Romanian youths employ their family social networks to move beyond them to get access to other available resources in their context of migration. We find that youths evaluate families as their main source of social capital. But how do they combine family and kinship resources to build new networks? The study draws on 57 in-depth interviews with teenagers from secondary schools in the Veneto Region, a paradigmatic area for the increasing ethnic pluralization of Italian society. Moving beyond the usual understandings of social capital and social networks we focus first on the relationship between bonding and bridging, in particular the distinction between horizontal and vertical bridging among migrants. Then attention is paid to the agency of youths, stressing their social competence to overcome initial difficulties such as gender inequalities or the limits of bonding solidarity.

Keywords

bonding and bridging social capital Moroccans Romanians second generation social networks youths’ agency

Social capital is usually described in the literature as the resources individuals and groups mobilize to get ahead or maintain a social position. From different perspectives, both Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1990) identify the family as the main source of social capital. Portes (1998) was the first to use social capital in the field of migration studies, introducing ethnicity as another form of social capital. According to the sociological literature on second-generation immigrants (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Portes and Zhou, 1993), groups tend to draw upon family and co-ethnic community resources to invert disadvantages and favour social mobility. Recent data, however, show that ethnicity as social capital may vary across groups, genders and the structural context of migration (Modood, 2004; Shah, 2007; Zontini, 2010).

Previous research, focusing on resources and networks within families, portrays youths as passive recipients of their parent’s capital. As a result, the debate on social capital has often neglected youth’s agency in using existing networks and building their own. This article aims to broaden the perspective on social capital by addressing access to social ties beyond families and regarding youths as active agents in this process.

As stressed by authors such as Anthias (2007), Edwards (2004), Edwards et al. (2003), Leonard (2005) and Morrow (1999) social capital, a cross-disciplinary concept, remains a slippery category given the different understandings provided by its founding fathers, Coleman, Putnam and Bourdieu. As suggested by Ryan ‘rather than using some vague notion of social capital, … it is more useful to focus on the different resources available within diverse social networks’ (2011: 708). In the field of migration studies most of the empirical researches underline the importance of social networks to understand the types of social benefits they provide and for which purpose migrants use them (Reimer et al., 2008; Ryan et al., 2008). We also agree with Anthias that social capital is embedded in social networks but does not coincide with them (2007: 789). Even when resources are available this does not mean that every individual will have the capacity or opportunity to mobilize them.

Drawing on the experiences and narratives of young Romanians and Moroccans in north-eastern Italy, we highlight first how young immigrants value the resources embedded in family and kinship networks and then analyse the strategies they adopt to combine these resources with those from friendship and school networks, in particular how they reinforce or exclude one another, to ‘get ahead’ in the context of migration. The study makes the hypothesis that the mix of resources provided by family and ethnic ties, in particular the positive and negative aspects of bonding solidarity and the reciprocity contracts in families, combined with the specific context of migration, may have a different impact on youths’ ability to enter extended ties.

Addressing these questions we seek to contribute to the growing body of work that focuses on actors whose points of view have been given, until recently, little attention within social capital debates. A further aim of this article is to try to disentangle the ‘blurring of bonding and bridging’ (Ryan, 2011: 715) providing new insights into the complexity and the dynamic nature of relationships embedded in young immigrants’ social ties.

The first section starts from the debates around social capital, its links with social networks, in particular the complex relationship between bonding and bridging, and the new perspectives that consider youths as socially competent actors. The second section introduces the qualitative study: the Italian migration context, sample and methodology. The following two sections deal with the results of the research: first on how youths value and use family social capital, and then the respondents’ degree of effectiveness in combining these bonding instrumental and emotional resources to establish links with extended social networks.

Social capital, social networks and youth’s agency

According to Schuller et al., across the diverse social capital literature, trust and networks are the two key component terms of the concept (2000: 14). Although built on different assumptions, social capital is considered as a positive entity, ‘an asset based on social relations’ (Reimer et al., 2008: 262).

In studies that involve migrations and ethnic networks, the concept of social capital has been used to interpret the process of integration of the second generation. Portes and Zhou’s (1993) segmented-assimilation model indicates three paths of mobility across generations: first, upward assimilation and consonant acculturation, where introjection of the host society values is coupled with economic mobility into middle-class status; second, downward assimilation and dissonant acculturation, where defence of the inner-city subculture becomes the means to oppose majority rules and values leading to deviant attitudes and reinforcing social exclusion; and, finally, economic mobility and selective acculturation where family and kinship’s values, guidance and support are used as positive resources for successful upward assimilation. In the last case, three significant factors are identified in determining second-generation outcomes: parental capital, receptivity of the immigrant community and the stability of immigrant families (Portes et al., 2009: 1079).

We argue that this conceptualization of links between social capital and acculturation does not take account of three other dynamic parameters: how actors mix in practice the different resources between bonding and bridging networks, the emergence of youth’s agency, and changing concepts of gender and family structures. Putnam’s distinction between bonding ties (‘people like us’), important networks for ‘getting by’ and bridging (‘people unlike us’) extended connections for ‘getting ahead’ and associated to a greater access to social mobility (2000: 23) has been re-examined by the author himself in a recent work. Putnam acknowledges that ‘high bonding might well be compatible with high bridging’ (2007: 143–144) in particular in friend networks. In the case of our young respondents, we will see that the reciprocity exchanges learnt in the strength of ties embedded in dense family and ethnic kinships will turn useful in building up bridging connections. Ryan et al.’s critical approach of the simplistic dichotomy between ‘bonding and bridging’ ties shows how the dynamic of social networks and actors’ capacity to navigate along the continuum of social relationships between these two poles, using cumulative and different kinds of resources, are often underestimated. They offer an alternative way of looking at networks, in particular in the case of bridging ties, which should be differentiated between horizontal and vertical bridging (Ryan et al., 2008: 686). People can bridge across ethnicity (horizontal bridging) but encounter more difficulties in establishing bridging across social and occupational status (Ryan, 2011: 716). This is particularly true in the context of migration and in the case of young migrants where often their teachers act as gatekeepers to unlock diverse new resources. The transition from bonding to bridging can vary greatly depending on the type of exchanges experienced in the family network and beyond and on the structural and cultural dimensions in which young immigrants find themselves to operate (Ryan et al., 2008). The socioeconomic context, affluent or deprived, the political openness regarding immigration can make the difference as we will see in our empirical study.

By the same token, when parents tend to support youths’ initiative to purchase new ties beyond the usual family and community networks, this attitude can influence their capability in activating bridging social capital (Nannestad et al., 2008).

As Vertovec reminds us, ‘networks provide both opportunities and constraints for social actions’ (2001: 7). Idealizing the cooperative nature of ethnic bonds tends to occult that ‘social capital is not necessarily positive for everyone all the time’ as pointed out by Zontini (2010: 823). Several scholars (Anthias and Cederberg, 2009; Kofman, 2004; Ryan et al., 2008; Shah, 2007) have denounced the underestimation of power-relationships between generations and genders intrinsic in ethnic networks, where weaker subjects – i.e. women and youths – enjoy only a limited degree of conversion and exchange of social capital. These actors are then eager to invest in extended networks in order to negotiate a degree of autonomy in decisions regarding conformity to roles and impositions. Seeing networks as a homogeneous social reality furthermore might ignore individual life-journeys and new strategies chosen by youths in utilizing ethnic and family resources in the aftermath of migration (Anthias, 2007: 795; Shah 2007: 43).

Social capital is an interactive process within the families and beyond them (Weller, 2010: 885). In a recent work, Portes et al. (2009) quantitatively confirm the outcomes of the segmented-assimilation model, but at the same time recognize, by means of qualitative analysis of a subsample of 61 interviews, that young children of immigrants can sometimes reverse the frequent risk of downwards mobility. Three factors (Portes et al., 2009: 1102) are identified: authoritative parenting and the prevention of dissonant acculturation; the presence of ‘significant others’, as teachers or family friends, combined with external assistance programmes; and, lastly, the preservation of cultural skills and family memories from the home country, i.e. the cultural capital. The relevance of these variables emerges clearly in our interviews with young Romanians and Moroccans.

Considering youths as generators of social capital entails a revision of the predominant idea of family in social-capital theory: the ‘male-breadwinner’ model. According to Coleman (1988, 1990), families, considered as primordial organizations producing social capital, generationally transmit a set of resources (trust, duties, information, support, time, norms) with the normative function of constructing and reinforcing shared values and expectations by means of the bonds of reciprocity they create. The gradual transformation of family structures (increase in the number of single mothers, double-income families and women in the labour market) by endangering this virtuous intergenerational closure of consensus and control, would then be one of the causes behind the decay of social capital in our societies (Putnam, 1996). The precariousness of the migratory condition furthermore exacerbates this new familial fragility.

Among others, Anthias (2007), Edwards (2004) and Edwards et al. (2003) have criticized this idea of family that does not adequately account for the dimension of power and its intertwining with that of gender (Bourdieu, 1986). The lack of appropriate consideration for gender is moreover accompanied by an ‘adultocentric’ view (Morrow, 1999; Weller, 2010) of family relationships. The idea of children and youths as competent social actors follows the empirical and theoretical perspectives introduced by the Sociology of Childhood (Corsaro, 2005; James and James, 2004); this approach allows for a repositioning of the role and contribution of minors in the obtainment and definition of the resources circulating within family networks. The role given to the agency of youths thus adds to the family relationships a dimension of exchange and distribution of resources and knowledge, without, however, neglecting the inevitable dependency that characterizes relationships with adults (Zaltron, 2009). Edwards stresses that in family life nowadays ‘trust and reciprocity, constitutive features of social capital, provide alternative understandings based on reflexivity and negotiation concerning mutual benefits and shared satisfactions, rather than prescribed and regulated obligations’ (2004: 9).

The increasing autonomy of youths in today’s family relationships can weaken bonding ties, but it also encourages bridging. Empirical studies show, for instance, that modifications in the family structure (Gilles and Edwards, 2006) or the mobility activated by migratory processes (Zontini, 2010) do not necessarily produce a loss of social capital resources, as indicated by both Coleman and Putnam. The result is instead a redefinition of the relationship between extended social ties and family networks, depending on the kind of resources provided, and looked for, by the actors.

This shift in perspective allows us to analyse the resources of social capital as a fluid and situational category (Anthias, 2007; Parker and Song 2006; Reimer et al., 2008), and to better understand how social ties provide access to different types of resources, how these are negotiated, competed for and mobilized in different ways by young people of migrant origin. Assuming that youths are active agents in using and transforming the supports they receive, we may capture how the type of solidarity–reciprocity contract in families and immigration experiences can make the difference with regard to their social mobility and future in Italy. It is also a way to explore the limits young migrants encounter when trying to access particular kinds of networks such as first work connections. In that case gender dimension cannot be ignored. Instead opportunities due to youth’s access to broader and more porous geographic spaces through their transnational links (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002; Levitt, 2009) can be usefully combined with social skills acquired locally.

These issues will be discussed in the empirical section to show how young Moroccans and Romanians may succeed in overcoming barriers in trying to develop bridging connections.

The Study: Research setting and methods

This study is set against the background of the increasing cultural, ethnic and religious pluralization of Italian society. Compared to the rest of Europe, Italy became a country of immigration only at the end of the 1970s. The main characteristic of the 4,570,000 of foreigners living legally in the country at the end of 2010 (7.5% of the population) is their extreme diversity. According to ISTAT (National Institute of Statistics) at the end of 2010 the three largest groups are Romanians (21.2% of the foreign population), Albanians (10.5%), Moroccans (9.8 %) followed by Chinese and Ukrainians (ISTAT, 2011).

The Veneto region, the context of our empirical study, satisfies all the criteria of ‘excellence’ set by Putnam in his comparative study of Italy’s regional governments: norms of generalized reciprocity, dense networks of civic engagement and secondary associations encourage trust and cooperation, the main sources of local social capital, a necessary ingredient for institutional and economic performance (1993). Veneto economic vitality is indeed supported by the efficacy of regional institutions, in particular the education system, which responds to the needs of local enterprises with professional training and apprenticeship policies. In spite of the economic crisis, Veneto, with an unemployment rate of 5 percent in 2010 is still one of the most developed areas in Italy (average national unemployment rate 8.1%, with peaks of 13.4% in the south). We are facing not only a model of successful industrial polycentrism, but also a form of social identity characterized by work ethics and by a strong entrepreneurial spirit. This explains why Veneto (third region in Italy with the highest percentage of resident aliens within the overall population – 11.4%) is so attractive to migrants. In 2010 the Veneto region was the second in Italy for the number of foreign-origin minors (82,194) of which 59 percent were born in Italy. This is why it is an ideal test-bed to explore the second-generation issue.

However, Veneto is a land of contrasts, where these young ‘new Italians’ (Colombo et al., 2009) will in a few years challenge the obstacles of discrimination. Lega Nord, part of the last coalition in power, finds here its most fertile soil, promoting xenophobic and anti-Islamic ideas. Despite all the efforts in mediation carried out by the local Church since 2000, Treviso, capital of one of the three main provinces investigated, still does not have a mosque to service its many Muslim residents (Saint-Blancat and Schmidt di Friedberg, 2005).

Given our research aims, we decided to select respondents from young foreigners residing in Veneto for at least five years and attending the last two years of high school education. In Veneto, as in the remainder of the country (Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), 2009–10), the presence of enrolled young foreigners is smaller in upper secondary schools (7.8%) than in primary schools (13.2%) and lower secondary schools (12.8%). The limited proportions of the population motivated resorting to non-probability sampling. We therefore chose the two largest groups of foreign students in Veneto, the three provinces with the highest concentration of foreign students, and the three main types of schools in Italy.

The available sample consists of 57 youths, their ages ranging from 17 to 20; 24 of Moroccan origin (12 males and 12 females) and 33 of Romanian origin (16 males and 17 females), residing in the provinces of Padova, Treviso and Verona, and attending the last two years of high school education.

All youths were born elsewhere but came to Italy to rejoin their family: 16 interviewees had resided in Italy for more than 10 years, 18 between 5 and 9 years, 23 between 3 and 4 years (the latter for the most part Romanian, as this group had come to Italy later than same-aged Moroccans). Most of them had been socialized into Italian language and culture in lower secondary school, and one-third in primary school. They were all fluent in the language of the country of origin as well as in Italian, and in certain cases also in a second foreign language.

Even if they do not represent a statistically significant sample of immigrant youths, the respondents represent a selected group that allows an analysis of how they manage their migratory experience and attempt to find a place in present-day Italy exploiting their resources and competencies.

The choice of the two groups was motivated both by criteria of regional representation, and by the intent of comparing different cultural backgrounds and migratory experiences. Romanians and Moroccans differ by the length of their staying in Italy. The Moroccan population is one of the earliest settlements of migrant workers in the country. Men came first and family reunification began in the 1990s; Romanians, however, arrived more recently (after 2000) and their numbers obviously increased with the entry of Romania in the EU. Romanians have a higher educational background than Moroccans, and the parity between genders in the labour market was strongly supported by the socialist regime. We hypothesized that, given the long-term residence of their families, young Moroccans would have experienced better inclusion in Italian society and that the Romanian families would have a more open vision of girls’ autonomy. Surprisingly, the results of the study show that both groups are more similar than we expected.

To capture the standpoint of youths, their motivations, difficulties and strategies we used the qualitative method of in-depth interviews. The interviews were carried out in the academic year 2008. Interviews (average duration 90 minutes) first covered the issue of practices examined by means of everyday narrations regarding the relational dimension and the forms of networks in the areas of family, school, friends and first work experiences. For each of these areas we focused on the kind of resources mobilized and on the relational aims and forms chosen by the actors (negotiating, choosing conflict or adjustment) in order to individuate norms of reciprocity, obligations and related expectations.

Special attention was given to instrumental and emotional support, something particularly significant in the case of youths, to clarify the importance of relational exchanges with adults and peers (Schaefer-McDaniel, 2004).

Social capital within the family: A network of safety and emancipation

What are the main concrete and symbolic resources provided by the family networks? How do young immigrants value them? Do gender and cultural belonging make a difference?

We asked our respondents to name five important figures within the family, friendship, school and work sphere: the people one consults when problems arise, to make decisions or to realize an important project for one’s future. It emerged that the first people young Moroccans and Romanians turn to, both boys and girls, are their parents (first the mother, then the father) and, as a second choice, brothers and/or sisters and members of the extended family or, for some, members of the friendship networks.

When problems arise or decisions have to be made, youths declared that the main resources and kind of help given by the most important figures were in order: their capability to listen to them, the information given, real-life examples from family context and experience and, last, money. All participants have mentioned the importance of emotional resources in relational exchanges with parents and adults. Reay’s (2000: 572) ‘emotional capital’ constitutes the stock of emotional-affective resources, a complex mix of involvement, care, attention, support and expenditure of time, intrinsic in family relations and accessible to youths. These resources contribute in the production of social capital, but also orientate youths in constructing their identity and sense of belonging.

Uncles and aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers and cousins also emerge as exemplary models. With the help of computers and mobile phones, youths maintain strong long-distance relationships with their family in Romania or Morocco, using transnational networks for emotional support and pragmatic advice (Ryan et al., 2008); these networks supplement, or at times even substitute for family networks based in Italy, when the latter are characterized by a higher degree of conflict or closeness. Aicha (all names are pseudonyms), for instance, finds guidance in her aunt who still lives in Morocco, when it comes to sharing reflections on religion:

I have an aunt I adore, and sometimes she can really clarify aspects of religion that I perhaps know nothing about … because with her you can discuss anything. Although she bears the veil and cares deeply about religion, she has the courage … she expects anything, she foresees everything, she knows that everything is possible and that there is always a solution or a remedy. And so you can discuss anything, even mistakes; there are taboos, but she does not treat them as things you cannot even discuss. She talks to you, she helps you, and if you have strayed from the path she brings you back where you were, so to say. (Moroccan female, grammar school, age 17, Verona)

Elder brothers and sisters function as forerunners in choosing the kind and length of education. They help creating bonds, bridging the gap with the outside world, in particular regarding the labour market. Cousins too, in Italy or in the country of origin, are mentioned as models and advisors, and also as symbols of self-realization and socioeconomic success. Sofia is in regular contact with her cousin in Romania and says:

The one I feel closest to is my cousin. She sets an example to follow. She is studying for two degrees, architecture and also business, because my uncle is an entrepreneur. She studies a lot, but she also knows how to party. She has a strong character, she is great at organizing things and making things work. She is the person I call if I have a problem. (Romanian female, grammar school, age 18, Padova)

In both groups youths narrate two types of transnational family and kinship networks’ use. One is similar to the experience of transnational caring described by Ryan et al. (2009): it is essentially a source of emotional support conferred through daily or weekly phone calls to aunts, cousins or friends youths trust and admire. Sometimes these ties are strategically used to obtain moral support and advice to negotiate and resist parents’ opposition to their choice of university or first job experiences in Italy. The second main use has more to do with an instrumental circulation of information, practices and ideas that appear as a supply for first job opportunities in the Italian context. For instance, Mohammed has begun to build a small business on the Moroccan consumption of goods and services drawing on his sister’s internet café:

I have mastered some music from Morocco, brought some video which cannot be found on the local market. I help my people to use the internet to buy cheaper travel fares and to get quicker access to the Italian welfare. Now they know me and systematically contact me avoiding spending more money in a regular travel agency or shop. (Moroccan male, vocational school, age 17, Verona)

In both cases the transnational dimension reveals youths’ ability to transform the ‘migrant’ condition in resources; strengthening the links with their own group and culture allows them to develop their individual aspirations locally maintaining in parallel their cultural skills and belonging (Portes et al., 2009). Moreover, by means of everyday interactions within their families, youths learn the importance of the circulation of trust in exchange processes with others, an inevitable aspect of the norms of reciprocity inscribed in social capital.

All young respondents have stressed that what their families expect them to do is have a better future than their parents. Cultural capital varies between the two groups: most Romanian fathers and mothers have upper secondary education, while Moroccans are less homogeneous. This fair degree of educational background is, however, not accompanied, in the case of both ethnic groups, by an adequate placement within the Italian labour market. Men are mainly factory workers and women domestics or caregivers, and some factory workers.

The dominant social representation regarding migrants’ status has to be taken into account. Control of illegal immigration is regularly at the top of the Italian political agenda, and the restrictive immigration law (n.189, 2002) and the recent security decree (n.125, 2008) make the migrant’s position precarious and tends to criminalize foreigners (Frisina, 2010: 558). Some groups such as Roma, Chinese or Muslim communities often face hostility and negative stereotypes. Moroccans arrived before Romanians, but both are still considered ‘newcomers’. Length of stay, linguistic competencies, educational skills, professional and civic inclusion are not sufficient to remove the negative social representation attached to migrant status in an Italian context where diversity goes hand in hand with it. Although Romanians are European citizens they also experience being ‘outsiders’. Excluding two cases of youths born in Italy to parents who had resided in the country for more than 20 years, the subjects were solely citizens of their country of origin, but all exhibited interest in also acquiring Italian citizenship. This situation may create problems for the second generations in the future, considering that Italian law on nationality is based mainly on the jus sanguinis (right of blood), which makes it very difficult for foreigners to acquire Italian citizenship even if born and/or brought up in the country.

This immigrant social status explains the importance that Romanian and Moroccan families ascribe to education in general as a means to improve the future of their children and to grant them social mobility (Modood, 2004: 93–95). Neither group introduces gender differences regarding education; parents allow boys and girls the freedom to choose and sustain them all the way. Tatiana explains:

My mother has always pushed me towards my best and told me ‘look, you have to study and then get a nice desk job, not something as a factory worker’. I think it is something I was given, because when in your environment everyone wants the best from and for you, you can’t just say ‘no, I’ll do otherwise’. (Romanian female, grammar school, age 17, Verona)

Regarding choices in education, young Moroccans and Romanians prevalently enroll in technical or vocational schools (on a regional level, more than 80%) rather than grammar schools, exhibiting a tendency opposite to that prevailing among Italians. Professional training is in fact more directly exploitable in the labour market and facilitates earlier independence and/or the possibility of helping the economy of the family, while grammar school has its natural culmination in university education.

All youths take strength from family and kinship ties to construct first bridging ties, but we observed different individualistic–collectivistic values and actions between the two groups. Romanian families, by promoting autonomy, the ethics of competition and success, provide their children with useful instruments to enter the regional labour market well known for its strong individual competition. The narrations gathered among young Moroccans instead show that they are more inclined to use kinship networks to find a job; they are also more socialized into cooperation and bounded solidarity, duties and obligations towards parents and relatives. For boys and girls, the collective familial dimension still prevails over the individual self-realization of youths (Zontini, 2010) as summed up by Rachid, and most others:

I think it is right that I will be expected to help them later once I have become an architect … they have helped me a lot … my mother always tells me that they are doing anything they possibly can for us now, but that later it will be our turn. We must think about what they have done for us, all the way from infancy, and we must help mum and dad forever, and also my elder brother, because he came here first and risked his life to get here. (Moroccan male, technical school, age 19, Treviso)

In contrast to common stereotypes about Moroccan families being more restrictive, parental control of girls can be equally observed in both groups. The discrimination concerns specific issues such as expenditure and friendships or when first work experiences involve spatial mobility or interactions out of family control. Moroccan and Romanian families tend to keep an eye on girls’ social links when it comes to letting them accept their first employment. They let them work only if they know the network involved, which can be ethnic or Italian. This strategy stimulates a social mobility that involves mostly horizontal bridging and promotes fewer opportunities (Ryan, 2011). This differentiation tends to hinder personal and social emancipation. Samia and Elana report:

Lately I am pestering them to be allowed to work this summer, to be a bit more independent, but they say no. They say that as long as they are around, I am with them and they support me, and if I need something I must ask them … I guess my parents are still deeply attached to our Moroccan culture … and find it hard to put things in context here. I can do it, I have been doing it, and know I can do it, because I manage to mediate, they on the other hand do not. They think that mediation means trespassing a border and forgetting your identity. (Moroccan female, grammar school, age 17, Padova)

Our school organizes internships and trips abroad … but my parents really did not want to let me go, because the whole class is there, including boys, and ‘who knows what you will do’ … I had even been granted a scholarship for a two-month period in Mexico last year, but they did not let me go. And I was really angry about that. (Romanian female, technical school, age 18, Verona)

Girls of both groups tend to challenge this type of control through a complex mix of factors such as: the pragmatic and moral support of their local and transnational friendships networks; the renegotiation of gender roles sometimes introduced by their own mothers; and, last but not least, the relevance given to the entrance of women in the labour market as a form of social emancipation in the country of origin and in Italy (Pels, 2000), as we’ll see in the individual cases described further on.

According to youths, parents’ expectations regarding their future appear as the first motivations to induce them to move beyond family networks. As Alexandru points out:

Now I have grown up and I can manage even on my own … and that is because they gave me trust. They trusted me and I did not disappoint them. (Romanian male, vocational school, age 18, Treviso)

Even if the types of relationships embedded in family networks differ between the two groups, or between gender as stated earlier, these relational bonds provide youths with self-confidence, a stock of cognitive and value resources linked to a specific collective memory, all competencies they can renegotiate to construct wider networks and draw upon to shape their future in Italian society.

The resources transmitted and negotiated within the family are oriented towards promoting autonomy and giving to our respondents a sense of responsibility early on when compared with their average Italian peers. In both groups the norms of reciprocity are focused on the successful insertion of youths in Italian society.

Young Moroccans and Romanians value strongly their families’ support, but they have also experienced the limits of family and ethnic resources and the constraints linked to bonding ties. Conscious of their ‘migrant’s status’ they look for a way of getting away from this label and turn to extended networks to resolve these contradictions, taking distance from the migratory experience of the parents, as Michaela says:

With my father … one of the issues we really disagreed on was the kind of relationship to be had with Italians … because I have experienced a different reality compared to the one he has. All the people I have met are educated and intelligent, and so I have never felt excluded or set aside, while maybe in his everyday life, at work, sometimes he has felt left out … and the same is true for my mother. (Romanian female, technical school, age 18, Verona)

Youths are aware that their own migrant experience can become a bonus. This contrasts with the difficulties encountered by their parents: youths know how to go the extra mile. Yassine summarizes it clearly:

You have more experience, and so you are more aware: for example, being a Moroccan you know one extra language and culture, you speak French too; you come here and you learn Italian culture; secondly you adapt to the environment, which is the most difficult thing, and you are more open and less racist, you feel at home in any discussion, you can understand. (Moroccan male, technical school, age 18, Padova)

Bringing into play family cultural capital youths ‘perceive difference as a resource, something useful to keep and be able to use in specific situations’ (Colombo et al., 2009: 56) such as first work experiences as we’ll see in the next section. Family networks strategies combined with the skills gained at school – we must remember that our respondents, enrolling in higher secondary schools, have bravely chosen to go beyond compulsory education – constitute a springboard to try to engage in horizontal and vertical bridging.

Moving beyond family and kinship networks

The influence of exchanges within networks beyond the family receives generally less credit when it comes to youths. Trying to show how young respondents use resources from a range of various networks (Ryan et al., 2008: 685) requires that we enter the complexity and diversity of individual adaptation paths. This is why we decided to examine individual cases more closely and to include brief biographies of three of the youths.

All our interviewees describe two main ways to start bridging beyond one’s family and ethnic networks: first of all friendship ties, then school and first-work networks. Given their age and social condition these provide the only realistic access to bridging.

The three selected cases allow us to focus in detail on how youths try to combine family resources with those of their new networks, and how they attempt to resolve the contradictions and limits of family resources transforming gender restrictions, for instance, and migratory experience in positive assets.

The first case illustrates the opportunities offered by mixed friendship networks composed of ethnic transnational friends, foreigner peers and Italian friends. In getting access to varied families with higher socioeconomic status and opening themselves to other cultural circles, in particular Italian ones, Moroccan and Romanian youths enter in contact with different types of resources such as pragmatic advice to pick the right university or obtain information on job offers. They also come across different systems of values and social practices that open them to greater independence or gender autonomy. Through friendship networks, most young Moroccans and Romanians detach themselves from their families’ tendencies to close ties, they improve their discursive and linguistic competences and gain a better understanding of and confidence in the Italian local society.

As Ryan reminds us: ‘the social location of migrants may shape their opportunities to establish links with particular kinds of people’ (2011: 716). In our case, one structural factor influences youth’s capability to build extended friendship networks. The Veneto region is characterized by a dispersed industrial setting. In opposition to the situation observed by Wessendorf (2010) among Italian migrants in Switzerland where the specific ethnic ties depend to a large extent on the structure of the neighbourhood, our respondents live in very small provincial towns where the composition of neighbourhood and school classes are not branded by a strong concentration of migrants. This scattered habitat contrasts with Milan, Rome or Turin, which exhibit, spatially, forms of ghettoization. In our case Romanian and Moroccan peers are dispersed over a wide geographical area, Italian friends instead are living close by, and are easier to meet and study with. Neighbourhood composition appears to be a key factor for engagement in horizontal bridging.

Anna, Romanian, grammar school, Padova, age 17: When friendship networks make the difference

Anna has been living in Italy for five years. She came to the country with her younger sister once both their parents had found jobs and a home. Her path has been prepared and supported by a dense family and friendship network. Anna’s is an excellent example for understanding the complex and porous relationship between bonding and bridging bonds (Anthias, 2007; Weller, 2010) and the role played by the agency of actors. The critical element is the internalization of migration as a winning model and a resource for social success:

My mother always says: ‘You think about studying, I take care of the rest.’ They want a happy and successful person with a good job: this why we are in Italy. This is typical Romanian mentality.

The definition of strategies to construct one’s path through life, however, takes shape through the capability to access and mix resources from transnational secondary networks with members of different origin, and especially friendship networks, (Holland et al., 2007; Levitt, 2009; Ryan et al., 2008). Most of our respondents are not involved in associations, and prefer informal friendships (Leonard, 2008). A convincing example on choosing the right university:

In picking a university, they (her classmates) have all chosen Verona or Padova as the closest locations. I want to study Political Science to work in international organizations, since I am also good at languages, and I chose instead Rome. I found the info on the net. Initially I had considered Padova, since it is closer. Then, however, I thought that Rome, since it is the capital, offers better work prospects and a more international environment. When they heard about it everybody told me: ‘What do you mean you go to Rome? It is far away … and what about your parents, you leave them here?’; ‘Yes, but it is for my future.’ My Italian friend instead told me: ‘You are going to Rome? Great! La Sapienza has a good reputation in Europe too.’ My Romanian best friend, who studies in Germany, has also told me the same thing. They convinced me not to settle.

The solidarity and support of her two best friends (one Italian, one Romanian) have been the decisive resources in negotiating norms from the family network (Shah, 2007; Zontini, 2010) and in facing parents who are not too inclined to let their daughter move far away for the reasons we explained before:

They think I cannot manage on my own, but they are really wrong. They actually got used to the idea of me moving because they saw me so determined. I told them: ‘Listen, I am not going to settle. There is no entry test, the tuition fee is pretty much the same, and if you cannot send me the money to live in Rome, I will find a job to support myself.’ They saw I was determined, and this drove them to support me.

Through her friendship network Anna adopts the resources of Romanian families based on individual autonomy and a spirit of entrepreneurship. Simultaneously she uses her friendship ties to take distance from the traditional family control in influencing her future and personal ambitions of career. She makes use of horizontal bridging to achieve her goals and takes more risks than the majority of her Italian peers.

Let us remember that the majority of Italian youths between 18 and 24 years tend to stay home longer compared to the rest of other young Europeans (Eurobarometer 55, 2001) even during university studies. This is obviously due to material costs and difficulties of entering the labour market; but according to recent studies (Billari and Dalla Zuanna, 2008; Cicchelli and Merrico, 2005) it can also be explained as the result of a mixed consequence of the absence of public policies regarding youths, coupled with the traditional strength of parental ties in Italian society.

The second case shows how girls try to combine different resources to turn their migrant condition into an opportunity. One is the redefinition of gender role supported by the mothers, when it is supported by the mothers’ type of neighbourhood networks and professional links, above all when they are interethnic or prevalently Italian. Lastly, these families’ mixed ties can be reinforced by the opportunities offered by school networks.

Fatima, Moroccan, technical school, age 17, Verona: Gender and migration as a resource

Fatima is an only child. She arrived in Italy when she was three. Two years later her parents decided to send her back to Morocco to live with her grandmother, relearn the language and not forget her religion. When she was seven she came back to Italy. Her parents separated three years later. This is a central episode in her life and necessary to understand the reconstruction of social capital within the parental networks.

Belonging to an ethnic minority and being a single mother are two factors generating lack of social capital (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1996); empirical studies (Gilles and Edwards, 2006; Morrow, 1999), however, show that this correlation cannot be taken for granted. Fatima has learned from her mother that the definition of gender roles within the family is a negotiable process and that certain prescriptions of cultural belonging can be reassessed (Saint-Blancat, 2004):

I have many aunts (in Morocco). But I see that their husbands have a dominating role ‘I set the rules here and if you do wrong I may even slap you’ … My parents separated because of something similar: my father got carried away and hit my mom one time too many and she decided to leave him. For me she set a very important example. My mother taught me that women deserve respect, that I deserve respect … that even a simple slap from a man is something I must not accept.

Having interiorized this alternative model of gender role, Fatima has built a strong capacity of autonomy above all regarding her individual career. Two other factors seem to be crucial: the resources internal to the mother–daughter dyad based on mutual respect and solidarity; and the use of secondary networks providing daily support and resources for social mobility to transform or overcome the challenges of migration (Anthias, 2007). The mother has networks mainly consisting of neighbours of mixed origin, and job-related networks consisting primarily of Italians. Fatima has a friendship network, with members of mixed origin and few Moroccans, and a school network consisting, first of all, of teachers. The latter have given Fatima the emotional support needed to consolidate her capabilities, for example attempting to complete two years of upper secondary school in a single year. Success in school is consistent with a precise idea of her future, an excellent example of the mixture of different cultures:

My mother is proud of me, but she is afraid of this world … that I may not find a job. Not because I am from Morocco, but because there are many people with university degrees who still cannot find employment and work in bars and restaurants. But for me it’s not a problem, I am not afraid of the outside world. Our characters are a bit alike, she too is strong and combative … I want to study law and work as a lawyer, maybe also because I am a bit exuberant and I enjoy public speaking. And helping people, I always liked that too. I moreover have the luck of speaking Arabic: I want to study international law and utilize Arabic and the other languages I am learning here, and in any case be able to help my fellow Moroccans.

Fatima is a successful example of the reversal of the effects of a seemingly disadvantageous background. Her case, like that of other Moroccan and Romanian girls, shows that negotiation and transformation of gender relationships, inspired by her mother’s behaviour, can become a resource. Through a critical review of gender roles, single and divorced mothers, working elder sisters have paved the way for younger girls to negotiate their autonomy.

Another critical factor in Fatima’s case is her capability to exploit resources from various networks. Her own mixed friendship ties and her divorced mother’s social mixed relationships turn out to be useful to have access to pragmatic resources such as information and cultural capital. Her mother’s contacts at work and in their neighbourhood enable Fatima to establish first relationships with Italian professionals who encourage her to follow her ambitions and explain also why she negotiated together with her teachers the challenge to study two years of programs in one.

Fatima’s case illustrates the blurring of bonding and bridging underlined by Ryan (2011). Her friendship ties, still having the characteristics of bonding networks, are, however, clearly bridging across ethnicity. They can be seen as horizontal bridging. In terms of resources available, her school’s network gives her access to first vertical bridging through her teachers’ support and advice.

Among youths the first experiences of bridging are still linked to emotional intimacy typical of bonding networks but, for them, it is a sort of pathway to acquire the necessary confidence to try further vertical bridging related to seniors and more instrumental resources as we can observe specifically in the third case.

This last case represents a clear example of vertical bridging recurrently available for young immigrants and that confirms Portes’s identification of significant others’ roles. First work experiences, recurring in approximately two-thirds of the sample, are portrayed in the youths’ narrations as training grounds: arenas for experimenting how to utilize and transform resources from the strong bonds within the family and the extended network.

Emilian, Romanian, vocational school, age 18, Verona: Trying to ‘get ahead’ exploiting secondary networks

Emilian is an only child who came to Italy with his parents six years ago. He attends the last year in a vocational school for hospitality. Both his parents have found jobs in restaurants, although both have degrees in engineering. Emilian has wanted to become a Food and Beverage Manager since he was a child.

Emilian is able to mix resources coming from his family and from his secondary networks, above all school and work contacts, utilizing them as instruments to face the descending mobility of his family situation (Ryan et al., 2008). His capability of agency is expressed on many fronts. He manages to balance the structural constraints of his family situation with the emotional resources his family provides:

When I am not in school I work. You could say that in my life, so far, there is not much leisure. There have been hard times financially, and so I had to start working to help my parents and provide for myself … I talk a lot with my parents and discuss my plans and projects, and they tell me: ‘You can go wherever you want, do anything, whatever you feel is right for you, what you heart tells you.’

He takes opportunities offered by secondary networks, in particular by ‘significant others’ (Portes et al., 2009), i.e. a teacher who showed him the best way to profit from his personal qualities:

I always go to work in the best places. This is something I discovered thanks to our teacher, and it was really helpful. During the first year he told us: ‘While you are young, go get work in the best places, because that’s where you are going to gain relevant experience and professionalism.’

Last but not least, a role is played by his ‘entrepreneurial’ calling, aimed at improving his limitations and overcoming his condition as a young foreigner:

I see my Italian classmates a bit afraid of entering luxury workplaces. I think it takes courage, and you must have courage, because the owners are going to tell you that you are not good, that you are not capable. But that’s where you gain experience, that’s when you learn, that’s what brings you one step closer to a better future … That’s how I do it. Some luxury establishments I found even on my own, also considering that my parents work in farm-restaurants where I, too, initially worked. But luxury establishments are a different thing. I looked for the best restaurants and hotels; I brought them my resumé and asked if I could do an internship. And then once they had accepted me they often asked me to stay longer.

When ‘significant others’ are missing, or when the resources of social capital are more fragile (a minority figure in our cases), the process of adaptation to the social context proves more difficult.

The nature and extension of youths’ networks inevitably differ from those of adults. Most of our interviewees are still dependent on their family’s financial support and they are on the threshold of building their life project. But they are clearly making the most of their available resources.

In their case it is difficult ‘to disentangle the blurring of bonding and bridging’ because they are often blending bonding resources (of their family and friendship networks, for instance) with the first steps of moving versus new ties that include experts and seniors (generally teachers and first employers). For most of our respondents the bridging process is mainly horizontal. It becomes vertical when the youths, through their own strategies succeed in capitalizing a specific mix of variables: the degree of openness of their families’ networks and own friendship ties with their school and first-job contacts that allow them to find the first local opportunities to move ahead. The collaboration of the local teachers and the economic dynamism of the Veneto region play here a fundamental role.

Some of the youths’ statements can appear to contradict their family social status and norms. These tensions reflect youth’s agency and the inevitable process of taking distance from their parents’ choices and values to integrate in Italian society. This is more evident in the case of girls who, trying to elude the constraints of gender role, look for any available social space to gain autonomy. According to recent research, access to study and career appear fundamental for female emancipation among the second generation of migrants (El Mahroug, 2011). Among both groups, it is above all females who include grammar schools in their choices, (out of 15 subjects, nine Romanian girls, three Romanian males, and three Moroccan girls) while nearly all of the males are technically or vocationally oriented.

For young Moroccans and Romanians, two elements remain crucial: their family’s social capital, parents’ trust in their capabilities and the ways through which they manage to transform the migratory experience in resources – such as linguistic advantages, more flexibility and audacity (and otherness) – into a source of opportunities.

However, they still have to overcome social and cultural barriers. Youths are conscious of the prejudices held against them that are linked to their migratory status, as explained by Dounia:

When it comes to speaking of foreigners it is always in a negative way never in a positive one. (Romanian female, grammar school, age 18, Treviso)

All respondents report that they experienced these stereotypes mainly at lower secondary schools but most remain confident that positive social interactions and exchanges make the difference, as underlined by Youssef’s words:

By knowing me better, my classmates change their views about me and Moroccans in general; they got the idea that Moroccans were drug dealers or thieves but it is because they never had Moroccan friends before! … (Moroccan male, technical school, age 17, Treviso)

Youths’ first attempts at bridging show their determination to improve their skills to reinforce the resources embedded in bonding networks, a sort of restitution of their families’ expectations and frustrations, and part of a strategy to overcome their present social status.

Conclusion

We let the actors themselves describe how they perceive and utilize the types of support and resources derived through social networks, when and why. This choice reverses a more traditional perspective that tends to consider family social capital as a ‘passive legacy’. Out of this theoretical standpoint derives the choice to capture the strategic capabilities of subjects, and the intersubjective processes, through the narration of everyday practices (Bourdieu, 1986). Social capital is not born solely of cultural determinisms (Putnam, 1993) or socioeconomic bonds related to the migratory condition: it is modelled day after day in a fluid, dynamic and situational manner (Reimer et al., 2008) through constant reformulations by actors.

The results of our study suggest that youths are active agents in the use and production of social capital and corroborate our hypothesis about the relevance of the mix of resources used by youths. Young Romanians and Moroccans recognize the value of the material, and above all emotional, support provided by family capital. They are also able to transform this into resources to overcome other challenges, when the reciprocity contracts in families are coupled with the specific context of migration. Trust, training in the practices of exchange, the promotion of autonomy and the negotiation of conflicts are all resources later employed in the utilization of other available networks: siblings, peers, transnational community networks, mixed friendship networks, teachers and first employers. These resources can prove more or less ‘strategically’ suited to the life-context. In our case-study, the entrepreneurial characteristics of north-eastern Italy, when they converge with the aspirations of youths, are an illustration of the importance of relationships between the agency of actors and the social context (Leonard, 2005; Morrow, 1999). Such opportunities may not be experienced by the migrant youths in more deprived areas with high levels of unemployment such as the southern regions of Italy like Campania or Calabria (Caritas/Migrantes, 2010). The recent economic crisis, which hit youth employment the hardest, could, however, affect this successful regional development in the next few years.

Are we being too optimistic? As stressed by many (Ryan et al., 2008; Shah, 2007; Zontini, 2010), in their objections against Putnam and Coleman, the transition from bonding to bridging capital cannot be taken for granted. In the case of immigrant communities, inequalities in power regarding access to resources such as full rights of citizenship and equal possibilities within the labour market, and the difficulties in overturning forms of indirect cultural discrimination, constitute structural bonds that must not be underestimated. These initial disadvantages may, moreover, be reinforced by internal gender inequalities within groups, and by differences between ethnic groups, which tend to favour certain individuals rather than the whole community when it comes to the capability of building and using bridging ties. The aspirations of Moroccan and Romanian youths and the reality of positive social mobility are separated by a gap in knowledge that only a follow-up study could fill.

The youths we interviewed, however, benefit from some initial advantages. As stressed by Thomson and Crul (2007: 1037), nowadays the sons and daughters of immigrants, together with their parents, are aware of the benefits they can derive from the forms of education offered in their context of residence. In particular, as Portes et al. (2009) suggest, in the selective acculturation linked to educational achievements, youths can benefit from the presence of ‘significant others’ to reverse the risk of downward mobility. Moreover, as we have seen, the typology of family relations can become in varying degrees an incentive for the creation of bridging links. Essentially, what makes the difference is the youths’ capability to respond to opportunities and difficulties, to engage with risk, to operate strategic choices and to assert their agency.

The second-generation issue is considered by many scholars as a barometer of success for social integration. Tensions with the children of immigrants have been recurrent all over Europe. Their demands result from various forms of direct and indirect discrimination they still have to face: types and levels of education, rates of unemployment, equal rights of citizenship, stereotypes regarding religious beliefs or systems of norms and values. Meanwhile, in all European societies, studies show the achievements of youths in diaspora (Crul et al., 2012; Saint-Blancat, 2004): acquisition of competencies and skills; a critical approach to the universalistic dimension of social policies and political rights; reinterpretation of social and religious norms of the cultures they belong to; and, demands regarding gender-role equality.

Although we cannot generalize to all young immigrants, what emerges most strikingly from our findings is that we are facing dynamic and demanding young generations, who are conscious of the lack of social recognition of their potential. In this light the migrant experience can become a resource and not a cause of loss of social capital as shown by Attias-Donfut and Wolff (2009). This is true if we assume that the management of ‘getting ahead’ is not solely determined by structural binds. By acknowledging the agency of actors we can discover the complexity intrinsic in networks, and above all the contingent, fluid and paradoxical nature of the management of one’s resources, even in the condition of being ‘different’.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The research has been funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (2006–08). We thank our colleague Enzo Colombo for his accurate feedback, Laura Girardi and Cristiano Furlan for their collaboration on the field work and the three reviewers of Ethnicities for their helpful comments and valuable suggestions.

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