Struggling between two cultures. The religious and cultural identity of the moroccan children community in Barcelona

Abstract

The aim of that article is the religious and cultural identity and how it is formed in case of the children of immigrants from Morocco. The hypothesis is that the identity of that group is formed as the complex relation between the origin culture input and the secondary socialization within host society. In other words, their identity is a result of the combination of two, essentially different cultures the Moroccan and the Spanish/Catalan one. The goal is to provide a sociological understanding of the biculturalism phenomena, as well as the relation between religion and culture as the clue components of identity. The analysis of the identity dynamics of the Moroccans born in Catalonia is a comparative one, considering the immigrants (often called first generation of immigrants) as a background for that comparison. The methodology applied is the in-depth interviews with immigrant’s children. One of the most important conclusions of the study is that Islam is a clear border between Moroccan minority and Spanish/Catalan society, border that the generation born in host society and submerged in two cultures is trying to cross.