Decolonizzare l'identità: Italia e America allo specchio

Abstract

As it is often the case with countries where mass immigration is intense, ethnicity is one of the most evident expressions of identitary politics in the United States, and the community of Italian immigrants is undoubtedly characterized by a strong sense of ethnic identity. In fact, Italian American culture had to manage conflictual needs, and still needs to do so; on the one hand the search for a sense of belonging and participation to the adopted culture, on the other the struggle against mostly negative or diminishing stereotypes. Starting from recent and significant contributions to the debate, the essay analyzes the limits of categorizations, and calls for multiple perspectives in conceptualizing and representing Italian American culture in the context of diaspora and transcontinental immigration studies. Migration emerges thus as a model for mobility and flexibility, as a reinvention of the self and as a way of negotiating the other.