The IDENTITIES project deals with one of the most fascinating questions that all human beings try to answer “Who am I?” Answering this core question entails thinking about “What kind of occupation do I want to pursue? What are my religious values? In which interpersonal relationships do I want to invest? To which social groups do I belong? How do I feel in relation to my ethnicity?” and so on. The identity question starts to arise in childhood, but it becomes the most important developmental task individuals have to deal with during adolescence.
In contemporary societies, characterized by increasing cultural and ethnic diversity, the identity formation task can become particularly challenging for adolescents. Young people with a migrant background (such as first- and second-generation immigrants and refugees) need to manage several (and sometimes even conflictual) alternatives proposed, on the one hand, by their culture and family of origin, and, on the other hand, by the host society. As a result, they can be more uncertain about their identity choices, and they can go on considering and reconsidering their commitments to various life domains. Similarly, adolescents without a migrant background growing up in societies with increasing levels of diversity can consider different cultural systems and explore diverse identity pathways. Thus, it is of paramount importance to improve our understanding of how adolescents' intergroup experiences in diverse societies influence how they manage their identities and how, in turn, this can affect their well-being.
Understanding how adolescents manage their identities in diverse societies has fundamental implications. In fact, it is a priority for contemporary societies to discover how ethnic and cultural diversity can be a resource for adolescents’ identity formation instead of being perceived as a threat. In the first case, in the main socialization contexts of adolescents (i.e. families, schools, and neighbourhoods), it is possible to establish conditions in which intergroup experiences (such as the relationship between Italian and Romanian classmates or Italian and Moroccan football players) can become a resource for young people to understand better who are they and to which groups and aspects of reality they want to commit to. In contrast, when diversity is perceived as a threat, adolescents can remain “hidden” behind physical and psychological barriers and even endorse prejudice and discriminatory behaviours against diverse others. Thus, the results of the IDENTITIES project can be used to develop and test evidence-based interventions focused on identities and aimed to increase adolescents' social integration and well-being. Furthermore, the project can inform local, national, and European youth policies for promoting the well-being of adolescents in inclusive and cohesive societies.
The IDENTITIES project adopts a cross-fertilization approach, integrating developmental and social-psychological models, to provide ground-breaking knowledge on the processes leading to the well-being of adolescents with and without a migrant background. By proposing a multidimensional ecological developmental intergroup perspective, the project aims to reach three overall objectives:
- to understand how intergroup experiences in ecological contexts (from parents, friends, school, and leisure microsystems to cultural macrosystems) influence the development of adolescents’ (personal, social, and human) identities;
- to understand how the interplay of identities affects adolescents’ (physical, psychological, and social) well-being;
- to understand how intergroup experiences in multiple ecological contexts influence adolescents’ well-being disentangling direct and indirect effects (mediated by identities).
