Dark-skinned foreign origin young people, adopted by Italian parents. Stereotypes, prejudices and problems in identity construction.

Italy is the second country with the world highest level of international adoptions, preceded only by the United States. This paper focuses on interethnic adoption’s children identity development. The identity construction process can be complex for adopted children who was born and has lived in very different geographical, human, social and cultural contexts for some years. Both the daily news and the results of the present qualitative research shows different discrimination episodes related to somatic traits, particularly dark skin. The research results which I present in this paper are part of a wider research project in which I interviewed adopted young people in Italy. The research results highlight both an identity construction process difficulty, but also the possibility to build an “intercultural identity”.