Caring for the elderly in the family or in the nation? Gender, women and migrant care labour in the Lega Nord

Abstract

This article aims at gendering our understanding of populist radical right ideology, policy and activism in Italy. It does so by focusing on migrant care labour, which provides a strategic site for addressing the relationship between anti-immigration politics and the gendered and racialised division of work. Three arrangements and understandings of elderly care are analysed, whereby care work should be performed ‘in the family and in the nation’, ‘in the family/outside the nation’ and ‘in the nation/outside the family’. Party documents and interviews with women activists are used to show how the activists’ views and experiences partly diverge from the Lega Nord rhetoric and policy on immigration, gender and care work. The article locates populist radical right politics in the context of the international division of reproductive labour in Italy and suggests the relevance of analysing gender relations in populist radical right parties in connection with national care regimes.

Keywords:

• Populist radical right
• gender
• women
• migrant care workers
• Lega Nord
• activism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sonya Michel, Emanuele Massetti and the two editors of the special section for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. These are defined by their nativist, populist and authoritarian ideology (Mudde 2007).

2. ‘Reproductive labour’ is key to social reproduction, defined as ‘the array of activities and relationships in maintaining people both on a daily basis and inter-generationally’ (Glenn 1992: 1).

3. Gender and ethnicity are primary and intersecting social divisions in contemporary societies, based on and reproducing both symbolic hierarchies and material inequalities in resource allocation and consumption (Anthias 2001).

4. The inclusion of the Lega Nord in the PRR party family has been debated, because of its liberal positions in early years. Also, some authors stress that populism and regionalism are key to the Lega Nord, which grounds a claim for the independence of Northern Italy, which it calls Padania, on an alleged common Northern Italian ethnic identity (McDonnell 2006). Over time the anti-immigration struggle – targeting Muslims more specifically – became a core element of the Lega Nord agenda and its electorate shifted to the right (Massetti 2015).

5. Instead, other PRR parties claim that women should return home to fulfil their ‘natural’ role as mothers.

6. 189/2002.

7. About 700,000 were regularised, half of which were domestic and care workers.

8. ‘Affido anziani, approvata la legge regionale. Lazzarini: “Passo avanti nella solidarietà”’, 18 February 2015, http://www.leganord.veneto.it/2015/02/18/affido-anziani-approvata-la-legge-regionale-lazzarini-passo-avanti-nella-solidarieta/

9. ‘Gendering Activism in Populist Radical Right Parties. A Comparative Study of Women’s and Men’s Participation in the Northern League (Italy) and the National Front (France)’, European Research Council Starting Grant, 2012–2014; and ‘Gendering the Study of Anti-immigration Movements in Europe: Women and Men Activists in the Northern League Party in Italy’, British Academy Small Grant, 2010.

10. Morena’s communication on Radio Padania, 28 September 2013.