Identifications and Multiple Others: A Case Study of Descendants of Moroccan and Pakistani Migrants in Barcelona

Abstract This article analyses the negotiation of identifications among children of migrants from the Moroccan and Pakistani diasporas in Barcelona. Drawing on a relational and non-essentialist understanding of identifications, it approaches identifications as socially situated processes of becoming shaped by habitus dispositions, positioning, enabling conditions and interaction. The study is based on qualitative and visual fieldwork with 17 young people in their final year of compulsory education in two public secondary schools located in a highly segregated and superdiverse neighbourhood marked by class homogeneity, heterogeneity of origins and the limited presence of white population. Through 49 interviews in three rounds, including photo-elicitation, the article explores how these young people narrate their relationships with different constitutive others. The findings are organised around three axes: others “from here”, the other others and our others. First, the article shows how “the Catalan” and “the Spanish” are constructed through geographical distance, class distinction, sociolinguistic boundaries and experiences of racist, anti-Muslim and antimoro discrimination. Second, it analyses how, in the absence of a strong presence of groups “from here”, young people establish complex relations of proximity and distance with other migrant-origin groups in the neighbourhood. Third, it examines the production of internal others within their own diasporas, particularly through distinctions between “good” and “bad” migrants. The article argues that school and urban segregation do not merely distribute social groups across space, but also establish the material and symbolic conditions through which situated ways of understanding oneself and others are produced.