Nuovi consumatori? Identità etnica e rappresentazioni visuali del gusto in un gruppo di giovani immigrati di seconda generazione

New Consumers? Ethnic identity and visual representations of taste among a sample of second generation young migrants - Drawing on a recent work by Massey and Sanchez (2007), this paper deal with the analysis of visual representations of taste from the point of view of the social construction of ethnic identity. We decide to give to each of our interviewees a couple of cameras, marked with the very simple signs "I like"/"I don’t like", and we asked them to take picture of every kind of things, places or people who surround them in their everyday lives. Going in depth with the analysis of this particular "photographic book" created by the interviewees, we become able to hopefully show the ambivalent side of the social construction of ethnic identity through the means of consumption culture. On one hand, we can confirm the Massey and Sanchez’s distinction between things and people in the construction of, respectively, host and family national identity. Yet, on the other hand, we can also explain the mixing and overlapping use of these two material and human means as they both contributes to the structuring of a particular form - though always changing - of ibrid cultural identity.

Keywords ethnic identity; visual culture; material culture; taste; hybridization; second generations;

Lorenzo Domaneschi, Nuovi consumatori? Identità etnica e rappresentazioni visuali del gusto in un gruppo di giovani immigrati di seconda generazione in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 3/2008, pp 81-100, DOI: 10.3280/MM2008-003005