Anna Paterno

Just a Matter of Time? The Ways in Which the Children of Immigrants become Similar (or not) to Italians

In this paper, we study similarities between the children of immigrants and those of Italian parents using data from the Itagen2, a survey of a large sample of pupils, aged 11–13, enrolled in Italian junior high schools in 2006. We measure three different aspects—linguistic abilities, friendship with peers, and sense of belonging in Italy—and investigate the determinants of similarity using multivariate techniques. Our results suggest that the Italian social context is favourable to a rapid assimilation on the part of children of immigrants to the tastes and ideals of young Italians. However, the similarity decreases when the children of immigrants are recently arrived in Italy, the economic situation and social capital of their families are poor, the childrens school performance is unsatisfactory, and their parents come from particular countries—mainly China, the Philippines, Yugoslavia and Peru.