Political Engagement Among Migratory Generations in Italy: The Role of Identity and Perceived Discrimination

International scholarship is increasingly addressing the determinants of political engagement among individuals with migratory backgrounds. Only a few studies have investigated the role played by identity and discrimination in influencing political engagement. No studies have considered differences by migratory generation. This article tries to fill this gap using data from Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens (SCIF) survey of Italian National Institute of Statistics (2011-2012). In the proposed analyses, we measured political engagement using three different variables, two for attitudinal political engagement (interesting in Italian politics and talking about politics) and one for behavioral political engagement (participating in political debate). We applied a set of logistic regressions with findings presented as average marginal effects and we deepened the results applying the interaction between social identity and discrimination. The empirical results indicate that both for first generation and 1.5 generation there is no significant evidence of a negative role played by the preservation of the minority identity as long as it is also accompanied by the acquisition of a majority (national) identity. Furthermore, after accounting for the control variables, the results proved that as discrimination increases, political engagement (both attitudinal and behavioral) increases for both migrant generations considered.