Living together again: families surviving Italian immigration policies

Abstract

In this article we provide an understanding of the challenges that immigrants have to face to relocate their nuclear families abroad. We will show that immigrants are often forced to leave their dependent relatives behind for much longer than expected, and that, despite their efforts to maintain intimacy at distance, the transnational managing of remittances and care entails certain risks. Both the separation experienced and the living conditions that reunited members face in Italy can make reunification itself a very sensitive moment in the life-course of these families, since the process of adaptation to the receiving society leads relatives to reshape and renegotiate their respective family roles and responsibilities. We are going to highlight how the availability of extended ties can represent a concrete form of support for many immigrant couples and lone mothers both during the separation and in their struggle to reunite their relatives, as well as after the reunification has taken place.

Keywords:

• family reunification
• transnational families

Notes

1. The title of the project is ‘Frontiering economic cultures: consumption and solidarity in familial networks and second generations’. It is financed by the Italian Ministry of Education and is coordinated in Milan University by Luisa Leonini.

2. Bossi-Fini law disciplines the permanence of TCNs in Italy linking their kind of job contract to the kind (and length) of their stay permit: after six years of regular residence (if they earn a sufficient income and if they hold a renewable permit), they can apply for the permanent resident card (Carta di Soggiorno). The main legal way of entry for TCNs are yearly quotas and family reunification. European citizens staying for periods up to three months are not submitted to any formality. Subsequently, they are expected to show a sufficient income (in order to be registered at the Municipality Register Offices and obtain their residence) just if they are not working. European citizens’ family reunification can be seen as an extension of their mobility rights: since EU citizens are allowed to enter, work, and travel back and forth, so are their family members. This can happen in slightly different ways depending on the nationality of their relatives (if they are European too or TCNs): in any case, their reunification is easier that in the case of a TCN trying to reunite another TCN. In the same way, being (or becoming) a relative of an Italian citizen can offer more options (in respect to be naturalized and regularized), than being a EU citizen's or TCN's one; finally, especially vulnerable subjects (minors, pregnant women etc.) can gain (or provide to relatives) long or short-term forms of protection. The levels of growing restrictiveness can be assessed taking a comparative look at the following dimensions: the characteristics of who can apply for family reunification, the requirements needed, the (amount and kind of) rejoinable relatives, the status relatives get and the regularization chances (and the chances to obtain a more favourable status) offered by family ties. European citizens can reunite their family members as soon as they want to: if they are working, they are not expected to show any proof in terms of housing and income, and they of course do not need any visa for their European relatives: in the case of a TCN's relatives, they do, but the law explicitly states it should be provided in the shortest time as possible. The definition of family ties in order to reunification could seem worthless in the case of a EU–EU family tie, since relatives themselves are entitled to the freedom of circulation. Anyway, it becomes worthy of attention in the case of EU–TCN family tie. EU family member are so defined: the spouse, the descendants (if they are under the age of 21 or they are dependants) and those of the spouse; the dependent relatives in the ascending line and those of the spouse. Moreover, the Italian state facilitates the entry and the residence also for other family members fairly with the European Union principle which aims to preserve the EU citizen's durable relationships as well as the ones of physical or financial dependence. While EU relatives have just to register at the Municipality the TCN relative has to ask the Questura for the ‘Residence permit for family members of Union citizens’ which lasts five years: after these five years the citizen acquires the right of permanent residence.

3. The proven degree of relationship with an Italian citizen determines for the foreign citizen (both EU and TCN) a better condition in our legal system, since the Italian citizen's constitutional right to the family unit comes into play. So, for instance, it finds full application in the Unifying Text on Immigration when it guarantees the residence permit to the foreign parent of an Italian minor (art. 30), or when it establishes that the foreigner staying illegally in Italy cannot be expelled if he/she is an Italian family member (within the 4th degree) or live-in spouse (art. 19). In this case the Police Superintendent issues a residence permit for family reasons. Moreover, the marriage with an Italian citizen is the easiest way to naturalize, since Italian law on this issue is quite restrictive (TCNs need ten years of legal residence, EU just four).

4. For Colombians it was introduced in 2001, for Ecuadoreans in 2003, for Dominicans and Peruvians in the early nineties.

5. Apart from the strict regulation of their sojourn in Italy through the residence permit and the difficult family reunification procedure, migrants also experience discrimination with respect to certain family policies: for instance, the state's maternity welfare pay (given to women unable to gain maternity leave through their work salary), third-child check, social pension (given to very poor people who were unable to pay enough tax contributions during the course of their jobs), disability pension, as well as the 1000 euro state bonus for the birth of the second child, are only granted to Italian or communitarian citizens and to those TCNs who hold a long-term permit. In this sense, it is quite clear that for the nation, immigrant women play the role of producers rather than reproducers (on this topic, see Thornton Dill, 1988).