Moving for a Better Life: Negotiating Fitting in and Belonging in Modern Diasporas

The paper focuses on the complexity of claiming and indexing fitting in and belonging in modern diasporas drawing on the narratives of young people (aged 15-26) who moved for the prospect of a better life. Successfully settling in a different context depends on being granted membership to the community and being accepted as one of us in at least some domains of human activity. This process is not straightforward and involves negotiating established hierarchies and positions of power. Dominant ideologies about the other are projected onto the newcomer, who is expected to fit in with the norms and ways of doing of the majority group and to display belonging. This paper focuses on the narratives of people from Greece and Italy who have either moved with their families or individually as young professionals. The narratives were collected through ethnographic interviews in a language chosen by the participants and fully transcribed and analysed following a critical interactional sociolinguistic approach. We pay special attention to the ways in which individuals position self and other. Our findings show that our participants narrate their lived experiences using binaries such as here and there, us and them, now and then in relation to belonging and fitting in. The participants claim intermediate, in-between positions and display strategies for claiming or resisting othering, while at the same time displaying fitting in with the broader, imagined context of the ‘new’ locus. We conclude the paper with the theoretical contribution of our work to socio- and applied linguistic studies and point to directions for further research.