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Abstract
This article explores the construction of migrant masculinities in the context of reproductive labour. It focuses on Asian Christian men working as porters in upper middle-class residential buildings in Rome (Italy). This masculinised niche of reproductive labour combines differently gendered chores: feminised tasks (cleaning and caring) - mainly performed in the most private spaces of the home - and masculinised tasks (maintenance and security), carried out in the public or semi-public spaces of the buildings. The analysis addresses the dearth of studies on the sex-typing of jobs in the context of migrant men’s work experiences. It also contributes to ongoing debates on the geography of reproductive labour, by exploring how gendered practices of migrant reproductive labour construct private and public places. The construction of masculinities and place is shaped by the gendered racialisation of migrant men at the wider societal level, which materialises in the construction of ‘dangerous’ and ‘respectable’ urban areas. The article suggests that widespread concerns over religious difference and public security play a key role in defining migrant men’s access to the workplace and in shaping work relations.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on earlier drafts of the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ester Gallo
Ester Gallo is Assistant Professor in Anthropology the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento (Italy). She has held research and teaching positions at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies – EUI (Italy), the University of Gediz (Turkey), the University of Edinburgh and the University of Sussex (UK). Her research interests cut across migration, gender and reproductive labour, religion, family relations, colonial history and memory, with specific reference to Italy/Southern Europe and India/South Asia. Recent publications include: Migration and Religion in Europe. Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences (ed., Routledge, 2016); Migration, Masculinities and reproductive Labour: Men of the Home (Palgrave 2016, with Francesca Scrinzi); The Fall of God. Memories, Kinship and Middle Classes in South India (Oxford University Press, 2017). Her articles have appeared in Sociology, Global Networks, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Emotions, Space and Society, Critique of Anthropology, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, and Migration Letters.
Francesca Scrinzi
Francesca Scrinzi is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow. She has carried out ethnographic comparative research work on gendered migration and migrant care workers in Italy and France. She has also researched gender in populist radical right parties (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), ERC Starting Grant 2012–2014; Gender and the populist radical right in Europe, British Academy Mid-career Fellowship 2018–2020). In 2015–2018, she was Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the European University Institute (MIGRANTCHRISTIANITY- Migration, religion and work in comparative perspective. Evangelical ‘ethnic churches’ in Southern Europe). Among her recent publications: ‘Beyond ‘women’s work’. Gender, ethnicity and the management of paid care work in non-profit domiciliary services in Italy’, forthcoming in Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies in 2019, Migration, Masculinities and Reproductive Labour. Men of the Home, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2016) and ‘Outsourcing elderly care to migrant workers. The impact of gender and class on the experience of male employers’, Sociology vol. 50 no. 2 (2016), both co-authored with Ester Gallo.