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This contribution1 is framed within the field of cultural studies and migration and ethnic relations, trying to examine how the Italian American experience has been imaginatively (re)created and received. It will entail an interdisciplinary approach about the cultural and literary analysis of the Italian diaspora in the United States, from a gender perspective that recovers the voice and historical presence of women as has been transmitted in the arts and critical methods. Focusing on the media and literary representations that deal with Italian migration to the United States since the last decades of the 19th century, their welcome or later development until our days, I make particular reference to a community mainly conceived in the masculine, as major receptions and persistent stereotypes about family relations and ethnicity attest. I will analyse, at the same time, the existence of other works that either contest or balance that cultural and gender stereotyping of the Italian American experience or community.
This paper1 investigates changes in the domestic work sector when passing from the informal to the formal labor market. The issue is explored within the context of the housework voucher policy (titres-services), which allows households to officially purchase weekly housework services from an authorized agency, through vouchers. This contribution has therefore a twofold focus: observing changes in labor market dynamics and investigating workers’ perception of this change. In order to discuss these issues, I will firstly look at the step from informal to formal labor market through two aspects: ethnic niches and individual labor dynamics – two bedrocks of Brussels domestic work market. Then, I will analyze workers’ personal experiences when acquiring a declared job in the voucher system.
Analyzing objective and subjective changes, a entral question of this article is to which extent the switch to the housework voucher system can bring empowerment to domestic workers. The sector work quality, in objective and subjective terms, has improved mainly by the setting of rules and by allowing workers to enjoy labor rights and a work status. The formal market dynamics of the housework voucher system remain, however, profoundly ethicized and marked by women’s presence, as was/is the shadow market.
The article shows that workers’ understanding of the transition from an informal to a formal sector is largely a result of their previous experiences and social position, mainly regarding migration status. This change will be thus much more assertive for workers who had their migrant status regularization and work formalization processes concomitantly, demonstrating that the most empowering shift is the one of acquiring papers, and not of entering declared work.
In the ‘age of transnationalization’, spatial mobility is highly valued as a resource and accordingly ‘sedentariness’ is often symbolically devalued. Migration between Poland and Germany (mainly from Poland to Germany) has a century-long tradition. Not only has it yielded the emergence of a dense transnational social space, but is also considered as a re-enactor of cultural traits and symbolic meanings. Spatial mobility is tied to notions of social mobility and to projects of life-making. Since legal restrictions for Polish migrants seeking to work and settle in Germany have vanished, the quest for ‘normalcy’ has enhanced and pressures towards even more migration have increased. I argue that symbolic meanings of mobility are decisive for hierarchies in transnational social spaces. I have put main emphasize on families’ practices of caring for and caring about each other: the first being more a physical or material activity, while the latter is a more symbolic and emotional one. The interviews reveal that people draw multiple differentiations between migrant populations in terms of their migration reasons as well as between the mobile and the immobile. Those differentiations are embedded in the distinct feature of the transnational social space between Poland and Germany with assumed differences in terms of ‘modernity’. At the end the symbolic meanings of mobility also help explain the puzzle of why the emigration rates from Poland are constantly high, although Poland is a comparatively wealthy country.
Often adopting a feminist perspective, the sociological literature on migrant domestic services (MDS) does not make explicit which feminist paradigm it speaks from. This article situates this literature within ongoing debates in feminist theory, in particular the tension between materialist and poststructuralist approaches. Then, it discusses the empirical relevance of each of those two paradigms on the example of the results of original research into the personalization of employment relationships in MDS.
The contribution proposes a new way of making sense of the diversity of feminist theories, distinguishing between modern and postmodern approaches. Indeed, since the 1980s, feminist theory in the US and Western Europe has undergone a ‘postmodern turn’, which renders previous typologies much less up-to-speed with recent developments in the field. Then, the article examines which paradigms are implicit in the sociological literature on MDS. Initially, personalization in MDS was mainly seen in materialist terms, as a way to maximize the quantity and quality of labour (including emotional labour) extracted from domestic workers. The emergence of postmodern approaches in feminist theory set off a progressive shift in MDS literature. First, this literature showed that personalization also fulfils identity functions for employers and
workers, then it widened its focus to include the affective dimensions of domestic labour (not to be confused with emotional labour). The final section shows how modern and postmodern feminist approaches can be combined within a single research, on the example of original research on personalization in MDS in Belgium and Poland. In particular, the contribution shows that the distinction between material functions of personalization on the one hand, and its emotional/identity functions on the other is not empirically operative. Indeed, migrant domestic workers generally use emotional/identity categories to frame material questions, and vice versa. This final part shows that, rather than representing incompatible approaches, modern and postmodern feminisms complete each other, in this case showing a fuller image of personalization processes in MDS.
This working paper is based on a lecture given at the Summer School “Multiple Inequalities in the Age of Transnationalization”, June 23-27 2014 at Goethe University Frankfurt. In it, I explore the linkages between sexuality and migration and aim to show that instead of deeming them a narrow subfield of migration studies, thinking through these linkages has much wider implications for different fields, including post- and decolonial queer studies, the study of race and sexuality, the study of citizenship and state projects of inclusion/exclusion, and for work that attempts to ce-center the predominant knowledge production focused on the Global North.
Highly-skilled labour migration in Switzerland: household strategies and professional careers
(2016)
The article investigates household strategies in the context of highly-skilled labour migration. It focuses on the ways highly-skilled migrants are taking up residence in Switzerland. The analysis shows different household strategies based on the perception of a further professional move. The perceived likeliness of a further move implies household strategies characterized by a high motility: the household remains ready to move and mobilises dedicated organisations (like outplacement agencies or international schools). When a further move is neither perceived nor wanted, the household develops more anchored strategies which are often cheaper. In order to cope with frequent mobilities, the analysis shows that household strategies are deeply gendered.
Der Artikel untersucht Rassismus und Sexismus und ihre materiellen und diskursiven Artikulationen an dem spezifischen Artikulationsort Haar, bzw. Locken. Anhand von biographisch-narrativen Interviews mit Frauen of Color und mit Hilfe von Ansätzen der Grounded Theory werden Fragen danach aufgeworfen, welche symbolischen Bedeutungen von Locken es gibt; Welche Umgangsformen mit Haar es gibt; Wie Haar eingesetzt wird; Ob es Widersprüche gibt; Wie sich diese artikulieren und wie Subjekte trotz rassistischer, sexistischer Diskurse und der damit verbundenen materiellen Unterdrückung handlungsmächtige Akteurinnen ihrer eigenen Biographien werden. Parallel wird der Forschungsprozess aus dekolonialer, feministischer Perspektive entwickelt, beschrieben und reflektiert und damit eine dekolonial feministische Methodologie entworfen.
This paper studies the linkage between international male migration and changes on land inheritance patterns in rural Oaxaca (Mexico). Land inheritance is a long-term exchange between parents and male adult children in Oaxaca: sons are bequeathed with land as long as they provide for their parents (and their wives care for their in-laws) while daughters are excluded from the family patrimony. Drawing on theoretical sample and 37 in depth interviews, this paper argues that intergenerational solidarity based on the parent-son alliance through inheritance is breaking down due to the uncertainty of men´s migration project along with the increase in the fallback position of wives, who may refuse to take care of elderly in-laws. Other alliances emerge instead: parents try to build new alliances with their daughters, bequeathing them agricultural and building plots. However, these new alliances and inheritance shifts are neither a heterogeneous process nor an automatic change and several family and social dimensions must be included to understand the different outcomes.
In der Pandemie hört die Gesundheit auf, Privatsache zu sein: Aufgrund der kollektiven Gefährdung der Bevölkerung wird sie zu einem öffentlichen Gut, das unter die Schutzverantwortung des Staates und nicht mehr allein unter die Selbstverantwortung des Individuums fällt, ja fallen darf. Pandemieereignisse können die Aufrechterhaltung der öffentlichen Sicherheit und Ordnung massiv in Frage stellen. Die jedes Mal vorhandene wissenschaftliche Unsicherheit bei neu auftretenden und unbekannten Erregern können Gesellschaften – Experten, Laien und die Politik – in Angst und Schrecken versetzen und zu heftigen Reaktionen zur Gefahrenabwehr in der Sicherheitspolitik führen. Pandemien fordern somit 'den Staat' in seinen Kernwerten heraus; es ist der klassische Konflikt zwischen Sicherheit und Freiheit. Das empirische Beispiel dieses Beitrags untersucht den politische Diskurs über den 'richtigen' Umgang mit dem HI-Virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus oder HIV) in den 1980er Jahren in der Bundesrepublik. Dass sich dieser Diskurs letztendlich zugunsten der moderateren Position verlagert hat und eine Versicherheitlichung von AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) vermieden werden konnte, ist vor allem der institutionellen Gewaltenverschränkung sowie der demokratischen Debatte um die Krankheit geschuldet, in der die Notwendigkeit der Schutzmaßnahmen öffentlich begründet und damit deren Sinnhaftigkeit trotz der vorherrschenden gesellschaftlichen Ängste rational hinterfragt und institutionell eingehegt – also entsicherheitlicht – werden konnte.
ichere Gesellschaften fordern immer mehr Sicherheit. Der Staat, traditionell verantwortlich für die Sicherheitsgewährleistung, gerät dadurch an die Grenzen seiner Steuerungsfähigkeit. In Zeiten globaler Risiken ist er allein schon durch seine territoriale Begrenztheit in seinen Kapazitäten überfordert, die wachsenden Sicherheitsbedürfnisse seiner vielfach verunsicherten Bevölkerung vollständig zu befriedigen. Gleichwohl machen politische Entscheidungsträger immer größere Sicherheitsversprechen, die ihr Verwaltungsapparat in Zeiten begrenzter Haushaltsbudgets kaum mehr einzulösen vermag. Damit befindet sich der Staat in einer paradoxen Situation. Je mehr Sicherheit er bereitstellt, desto weitgehender werden die gesellschaftlichen Sicherheitsanforderungen und desto weniger ist er selber in der Lage, diese zu befriedigen. Der Staat wird zum Opfer seines eigenen Erfolgs. Dies ist einer der Haupteffekte des Wandels der Sicherheitskultur. Dieser Beitrag, der als Einleitung zum zweiten Projektband konzipiert ist, geht auf die Folgen dieses Wandels für die Sicherheitspolitik nach und geht dabei insbesondere auf innenpolitische Faktoren von Sicherheitspolitik ein. In diesem Zusammenhang kommt der Kommunikation von Gefahr und Sicherheit und dem Zusammenwirken von Laien- und Expertenwissen im Rahmen einer demokratischen Sicherheitspolitik eine zentrale Rolle zu.