Migratory and intercultural processes from a perspective of gender: the changing roles of women in their countries of origin and destination

This editorial project aims to explore now-consolidated areas of multidisciplinary research like migration, the meeting of diverse cultures and religions and that of the networks of communities and associations, and to analyze them from a perspective of gender. It was chosen with the hope of adding new evidence to the extensive literature already in existence in regard to each of these issues, and proposes to integrate them through an analysis of those points of intersection whose protagonists are women.

In many recent studies some famous scholars (Sen 2001, Touraine 2006) have highlighted the important changes underway regarding women’s roles as social actors, particularly as regards the issue of their participation in highly developed societies and in the migration ‘outposts’ of those countries which are culturally less favorable towards the public role of women. The individual and collective implications of the progressive affirmation of women in singular contexts and social conditions, such as those produced by migration flows which witness at the same time the meeting of diverse cultural models – migrants from countries with a less tolerant view of female participation who arrive in societies with more advanced models – are very significant social processes. But the social research is just starting to explore them. One important question arises in respect of these social dynamics: is there a greater allocation of social roles for female migrants in the country of destination and, by extension, in their countries of origin too?

To illustrate these novel social processes, this editorial project aims to take into consideration some theoretical and empirical research that focuses on the emerging – and unexpected – roles of women in the migration processes, from the country of origin to the early stages of socialization in the host country. The most relevant profiles that the women in migration usually show are those they requested for themselves in different forms of community life in their countries of destination with a function of cultural integration and intermediation with the cultural system of the country of origin. But they also operate as actors of support and orientation in favor of the migrants – men and women – of the following flows of migration in the host country. Some evidence suggests that the social research has to give relevance to the incidence of factors of age and geographical origin in the definition of the new social roles of female migrants, both in the public life of the country of destination and in those forms of community and association retaining cultural links with their country of origin (Andersson et al. 2010).

This editorial project, however, intends to propose a new perspective in the analysis of the different factors – and their correlation – to define this complex social process. We consider that the ‘traditional’ gendered analysis of processes and actors of the migration flows and of the intercultural meeting is no longer representative. Even if the assumption of the factor of gender has recently oriented the social research, it doesn’t also take into account some other social indicators as sociologically explanatory – age as the occupational or family status, or the cultural origins and not just economic conditions. This lack seems decisive: not focusing on those social process changes and – above all – how and why they occur.

We assume that the role of women in migration represents a double innovation in contemporary societies: globalization – and its consequences – has radically hastened the transformation of the migration process and promoted the strategic function of women as protagonists of social change. And so, the women in migration – we mean both the physical and cultural processes of mobility (Fung and Wright 2003) – are the social actors of the change, of innovation, and, in the particular condition of their status in the host countries, of a cooperative action.

The research proposed in this editorial project aims to verify this hypothesis through the connection of the factor of gender with those indicators that are substantial in the analysis of a new physical or cultural context of action. Thanks to this multiple approach it is possible to focus on the reasons and the modalities of this social process as relevant.

The women described in the following research articles are actors of social change, starting from the theories mentioned above, for their strategic role in the change of the same migration process. As Edith Pickler depicts in the case study of the female migrations in Germany in the last four/five decades, these flows are not only different for the new social role of the women or for the new causal factors that push them to migrate. The innovation is made by the connection of these factors: the author analyzes and gives weight to regional differences, which depend on the migration typologies and the dominating economic structure in the area. In the end, she holds as a common element in the different social aspects analyzed that the female migrants, not only Italians, develop adaptive social identity that is one of the most representative features of the migration process today.

The sociological complexity that this paper focuses on is introduced by the study that Ruba Salih and Sabrina Marchetti propose about one expression of the cultural – and in this case also political – reaction to the innovative impulse that the women in migration can have. In particular, the authors analyze deeply the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), a policy framework that intends to facilitate the mobility of migrants to the EU from the bordering countries, in respect of the European protection of human rights. So, the cultural, economic and political implications of migration mobility are so different and integrated among them that, in the end, this sensitive legislator winds up contributing to the reproduction of traditional gender biases in the countries of origin as well as of destination. These processes move too fast for the formalization of the law and the collective recognition of a new social role and the recent conservative trends towards the migrants (Fraser 2012, Sassen 2014), in Europe as in the United States, show the magmatic dynamic of an innovation.

In the new social functions of the women as actors of change and innovation we can identify some relevant features and, among them, especially in these composite contexts, we have chosen the profile of a new form of citizenship that women embody and, sometimes, strongly claim (Friedmann 1999). Colella, Gianturco and Nocenzi present the outcomes of exploratory and descriptive research that mainly concentrates on the right to housing and the role of female immigrants among the foreign communities that take part in social movements in Italy. They propose this case study to verify that it is a symbolic magnifying glass for some interesting social and cultural changes regarding the settling and integration of foreign communities into the host society. Furthermore, it reveals that women have a changing, innovative and cooperative function as they describe in autobiographical interviews. They are women and foreigner in the host society, so they have to struggle twice for recognition of their status. The main – and final – outcome of this fight is their ‘bridge’ role with the country of origin in favor of the migrants of the following flows to the host country, as well as the affirmation of a ‘new’ citizenship in the destination society claiming peculiar rights (Denèfle 2008). The innovation of these social claims and the active role they take, for example on the right to housing, are evident in the transformations of some areas of the cities, in the new urban policies for diversity management and in the growing cases of experience of cooperative forms of participation (Bogumil 2001).

The features of the cultural innovation of the agency of the female immigrants are evident also in the post-emergency phases of arrival in the host country. There is relevant evidence in the cultural approach of the migrant second generations that Renata Pepicelli describes in the peculiarity of the religion dimension. As her interviews of young Muslim people reveal, their religious identity has been projected in a ‘de-territorialized’, ‘globalized’, ‘neo-community’ dimension that shapes an original profile. It is not exclusively marginalizing because it is more and more lived by the second generations as a way of affirming themselves in the European public sphere, over Islamic extremism. The author, however, stresses their different approach to social identity and participation: in this case, their citizenship follows adaptive models based on more and more effective processes of integration.

The different case studies depicted by these two empirical researches focus on the key concepts of change, innovation and cooperation in the different phases of the immigration process and social integration. As Serra and Sánchez assert, the analysis of the social contexts where the migratory and intercultural processes evolve, reveals they could be spaces of opportunity or containment. It is mainly according to features offered by the labour market as well as other characteristics such as local demographics, the active time of migration flows and interethnic relations, as well as migrants’ conditions and their own economic, cultural and social capital. So, they are factors that interact amongst them to determine the situation of migrant women.

The research confirms that a multi-dimensional methodological approach is the analytical strategy for an appropriate sociological understanding of this phenomenon. But it’s also evident that each political assessment, juridical formalization or cultural recognition has to consider the features of originality that women embody in contemporary societies as well as in the past ‘gendered’ social structures.

ORCID

Mariella Nocenzi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2256-4101