The Biographical Approach and the Analytic Induction for Develop the Identity-Building Processes: An Empirical Case with Young “Italian” Muslim Women

The papers aims to illustrate how the biographical approach and analytic induction can be used for develop the identity-building processes. To this end, it will present a research carried out in Florence, by collecting biographical narratives from women of Moroccan and Pakistani origin raised in Italy.  More specifically, we will explore the usefulness of the biographical approach in shedding light on the role of ‘agency’ (the capacity of a subject to choose how to act) and ‘intersectionality’ (the interconnection among different social categories of belonging or identification in order to study their mutual influence) in the identity-building processes. At the same time, we will illustrate the use of analytic induction to identify, select, and combine certain features useful for defining identity profiles adequately. In brief, the biographical approach and of analytic induction will be used to identify the main ideal-typical features of such processes, thus allowing us to switch from an individual story to a sociological type into which this biographic story can be inserted. More specifically, with reference to the reported investigation on Muslim women of the second generation, analysis of the empirical materials evidenced three identity constructs: ‘neo-communitarian’, ‘spiritualist’ and ‘traditionalist’.