Hibridizaoija Kot Posledica Novih Kulturnih Oblik

The paper is based on data collected during spring 2006, through qualitative group interviews addressed to 48 immigrant adolescents attending technical and business oriented high schools in Modena, Italy, previously involved in the European project COMICS (Children Of Migrants Inclusion Creative Systems). The paper highlights that participation in relevant social processes of the host society doesn't require neither non-critical engagement in its cultural forms nor fully sharing of the meanings of cultural symbols. Social participation is connected to non-stop processes of negotiation and mixing of symbols' meanings and cultural forms, through intercultural communication. As categories like “integration” and “adaptation” seem to oversimplify the shades of social participation, the paper aims to report the variety in meanings, expectations and problems of the integration paths followed by young immigrants, accordingly to their autonomous self-expression.