Domestic work, family life, and immigration in Sicily

Abstract

Many Italians now depend on foreign women and men to look after their homes, their children, and the elderly. After charting the recent increase in demand for paid domestic labor in Palermo and describing immigrant experiences at work in Sicilian homes, this article examines how domestic employment impedes immigrant family formation. In search of economic security so crucial to the pursuit of family plans, many immigrants leave Sicily for the Italian north, where foreign men are most likely to find employment outside the domestic sector. The article also considers the extent to which today's immigrants resemble the peasants studied by Jane and Peter Schneider.

Keywords:

• Immigration
• domestic work
• family
• mobility
• Sicily

Acknowledgements

Immigrants and Sicilians too numerous to name gave freely of their time, making this research both possible and pleasurable. We acknowledge the generous support of the Wenner–Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and Dowling College. The authors thank David Kertzer and Mike Blim for their insightful comments on a draft of this article.

Notes

1 While historical studies tend to focus on co-residential servants, we include domestic workers residing with employers as well as those who lived with their own families (probably a common occurrence in the densely nucleated settlements of the south). We cannot offer a percentage of peasant women involved in domestic service, but the figure was certainly high in the latifundist western part of the island; virtually all aristocratic and civile households hired several servants, and artisans and medium-sized farmers hired occasional domestic labor (personal communication, Jane and Peter Schneider, September 2005). According to Giovanna DaMolin (1990), a somewhat different pattern obtained in the center-north of Italy, where young men and women commonly lived and worked with families of farmers and artisans. In this context domestic employment was more a life stage than a stigma.

2 Accounts include Andall (1998, 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2003), Anderson (2000), Anthias and Lazaridis (2000), Campani (2000), Zontini (2002), Tacoli (1999), and Pugliese (1998).

3 Questions of ageing and elder are explored by Bacci (2000), Carbonin et al. (1997), Dell'Orto and Taccani (1993), and Mestheneos and Triantafillou (1993). Very few scholars have investigated the intersection of migration and elder care; exceptions include Christian (2000) and Van der Geest et al. (2004).

4 Over this period we have spent about one month each year in Sicily. The research and findings are described in more detail in a book manuscript, Dirty Work.

5 Immigration to Sicily is described in more detail in Booth and Cole (1999) and Cole (1997).

6 This pattern was repeated in other Italians cities as well; see the work of Andall for a description of the Rome area.

7 There were just over 10,000 registered foreigners resident in Palermo in 1998; as of 2003, city officials reported 16,593 registered foreigners and estimated an additional 5000 – 7000 unregistered (Giornale di Sicilia, 18 February 2003).

8 Amnesties were offered in 1986, 1990, 1995, 1998, and 2002.

9 Our impressions are seconded by a study conducted in 2000 showing that about one-quarter of the foreign men interviewed in Palermo work in the sector (Zincone 2001: 519).

10 A flexible hierarchy exists in the domestic sector, with Filipinas enjoying the most prestige and best working wages and conditions and sub-Saharan Africans receiving the least desirable positions. We describe this in detail in Dirty Work.

11 The national standards stipulate working conditions, pay, and benefits. The employer is obliged to register the employee and make contributions in her or his name to the national social security program. This gives the employee the right to a series of benefits, including vacation, partially paid sick leave, severance pay, and disability, maturity, and unemployment benefits. The first national contract dates to 1974.

12 Andall (2000a) reports Cape Verdean and East African female single parents and couples occasionally placing children in church residential centers or, more seldom, in foster homes. We have not heard of this in Palermo.

13 In her study of Filipino women in Rome, Tacoli (1999) found that women wielded their newfound influence within the family to promote the immigration of female rather than male relatives. Women found employment more easily than men, were more inclined to share tasks, and were less likely to become a burden. Favaro (1993) outlines several types of female immigrant family situations.

14 Andall (2000a: 129 – 30) describes how Antonia, from Cape Verde, arrived in Palermo in 1977 but moved to Rome a year later to be near her mother who was working there as a live-in. Antonia made the move by finding a family that was about to move to the Eternal City.