Paper short abstract:

We draw on the experiences and imaginaries that shape transnationality in youth coming from “mixed-race” families in Catalonia, Spain. We focus on opportunities and obstacles attributed to their “transnationality”, paying a comparative attention to heterogeneity and inequalities within them.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on the experiences and imaginaries that shape transnationality in adolescents and youth coming from “mixed-race” families in Catalonia, Spain. We start from the premise that the internationalisation and intensification of immigration in recent decades in Spain has gone hand in hand with the significant increase in mixed unions between natives and immigrants and, therefore, also with the significant increase in the births of children from these unions. Qualitative studies in this regard have indicated that the experiences of being a descendant of a mixed union are very heterogeneous, and often unequal, depending on multiple factors, which include the geographical origin (ethnic-cultural) and the stereotypes associated with their ‘phenotype’. From this contextual landscape, we explore, through a qualitative lens focused on youths’ narratives, how all these conditionings and constrictions affect their ordinary experiences and visions of transnationality. We aim to shed light to their consciousness of being “transnational” and the kind of opportunities and also obstacles attributed to this “transnationality”, paying a comparative attention to heterogeneity and inequalities in relation to key factors such as cultural origin of the immigrant progenitor, social status, cultural capital and gender factors, among other possible in times of, as stated by the panel, increasing nationalism, populism, mediatisation and virtualisation.

Our data and results come from the R&D research project “MIXED YOUTH: Social Relations and Identity Processes of Children of Mixed Unions: Mixedness, Between Inclusion and Social Constraints” (CSO2015-63962-R, MINECO, 2016-2020).