Being a Grandchild of Italian Emigrants in Chile
Building on an ethnographic research I carried out in the Italian region of Trentino and in Chile, this article examines the relation of Italian emigrants’ grandchildren’s born in Chile to their family origins. In particular, it examines how they absorb their family history and how they contribute to reshaping kinship relations within the transnational families in which they are embedded. This article shows that there is a close relationship between the transmission patterns of family history and family belonging and the processes by which emigrants’ descendants appropriate them. It observes that while identifying with one’s family history seems to be a generational process, transmitting a sense of family belonging and perpetuating kinship seems to be a gendered process. This article also analyzes how family relations are affected by emigrants’ descendants “backwards mobility” to their ancestors’ original country and how transnational families, which are a constellation of potential, often dormant relations, build on and are thrive thanks to their members’ mobility.