Jacqueline Andall

Gender, migration and domestic service : the politics of black women in Italy

Contents: Introduction Italian gender models Italy and immigration Setting the scene: the regional context The ACLI-COLF and the domestic work sector in Italy Black women and domestic work: the early years Transformation and change Domestic work and family life Gender, ethnicity and class: the evolution of the ACLI-COLF organization Crossing boundaries: the Libere, Insieme Association Conclusion Appendices Bibliography Index.

The geography and economic sociology of recent immigration to Italy

Summary This article provides an overview of the geography and economic sociology of recent immigration to Italy. Its main purpose is to offer a contextual framework for the mainly place‐ and nationality‐specific studies which follow and make up the main contributions to this special issue of the journal. Throughout our account, stress is laid on the regional diversity of the immigrant experience within Italy, and on the diversity of migratory types and nationalities which have entered the country over the last twenty‐thirty years. In the final part of the article we make a brief analysis of the Italian political response to the countrys relatively new status as a receiver of large‐scale immigration.

Cape Verdean Women on the Move: ‘Immigration Shopping’ in Italy and Europe

Summary The central theme of this article is the notion that migrants ‘shop’ for opportunities of work, income and social advantages in different countries. Taking the case of Cape Verdean women migrants, the research is based on 25 in‐depth interviews carried out with domestic workers in Rome and Rotterdam. I explore ways in which these women have negotiated mobility, employment and family and household responsibilities within the context of a largely independent female migration which is well established from Cape Verde. Italy has a nodal role in channelling mobility from Cape Verde to various destinations in the global Cape Verdean diaspora. But while opportunities for stable employment as domestic workers in Italy have been a constant factor encouraging Cape Verdean women to migrate to Italy, difficulties over pay, working conditions, welfare and family reunion have led to much onward movement to the Netherlands and elsewhere.

Industrial Districts and Migrant Labour in Italy

Both the flexibility of labour and wider sociocultural issues have historically been identified as important dimensions of the economic success of Italys industrial districts. Increasing numbers of labour migrants from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe are now working in industrial districts and living in local communities previously characterized as socially cohesive. Immigration status, Italian employment legislation and the micro-level conditions prevailing in districts appear as key issues affecting employment relationships for labour migrants, and the social cohesiveness seen to contribute to the success of industrial districts is being undermined through the treatment of labour migrants as people outside the national Italian community in terms of rights and other markers of citizenship.

Women migrant workers in Italy

Abstract While Italy has had much experience of both internal and external migration, an increasing number of migrants have recently settled in Italy. There has been a general tendency for womens involvement in migration to be overlooked, and emphasis placed on male migration. This article will thus look specifically at the experience of black women migrants in Italy. This article will demonstrate that gender has been a significant factor in womens experience of the migratory process within the Italian context, but that their race and status as migrants are also factors that contribute to their overall position in Italian society. I will argue that the different response to the presence of female migrants when compared to male migrants is due to a number of factors but that the short- and long-term consequences of this differential treatment have both positive and negative implications.

Immigration and the Italian Left Democrats in government (1996–2001)

ABSTRACT Andall focuses on the Democratici di Sinistra (DS), a mainstream left party, during their first period of post-war national governance in Italy. She seeks to establish whether the DS were able to shape the direction of immigration politics in Italy in a ‘left’ direction while in government. Her analysis looks at their approach to the integration of labour migrants, focusing primarily on the political management of access to Italian citizenship and the local vote. She demonstrates how the anti-immigration activities of the Lega Nord inhibited the implementation of the DSs stated policy intentions in matters of integration. As a consequence, left–right convergence occurred regarding immigration control, while left–right differentiation in relation to integration remained largely at the rhetorical level.

Gendered Mobilities and Work in Europe: An Introduction

Gendered Mobilities and Work in Europe is an interdisciplinary collection of papers that, together, analyse the gendered aspects of migration and the labour market in Europe. The empirical research presented in this special issue of JEMS incorporates labour market sectors designated as both high- and low-skilled and points to shifting gendered employment opportunities and working conditions for contemporary labour migrants. The papers demonstrate how both national and regional policy frameworks intersect with specific employment sectors and different typologies of migration to produce varied outcomes for male and female labour migrants even when employed in the same sector.

Introduction: immigration and political parties in Europe

The increasing number of countries incorporated into the global migration system has led to migration featuring as an important issue on many national political agendas. Sending, receiving and transit countries may all experience migration in different ways but their specific experience of migration inevitably tends to have social and political implications for issues such as national identity, governance, labour markets and societal transformation. Categorizing countries as sending, receiving or transit can, of course, underplay the extent to which these are not normally neat and clear-cut divisions but rather overlapping dimensions of the phenomenon. As one would expect, the issues that national governments define as most significant politically in relation to migration reflect the particular location of individual countries within the global migration system. Those countries that are primarily sending countries may concurrently implement policies to stem the brain-drain and to ensure that their diaspora population remains politically, economically and culturally tied to the country of origin. On the other hand, receiving countries that envisage migration as permanent settlement are more likely to be concerned with shifting the cultural and political allegiances of recent migrants from the country of origin to their new country of residence. In Europe trends in the political governance of migration have meant that issues of migration control, ‘illegality’ and trafficking have emerged as dominant ones. In addition, other, more longstanding concerns around cultural identity have resurfaced in new ways as a consequence of events such as the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 or the terrorist bombings in London in 2005. The security concerns and ambiguous migratory policies of European countries are not easily reconcilable with the development concerns of sending countries. The Euro-African conference held in Rabat in 2006 aimed to bring together the perspectives of countries differently positioned in the global migration system. This was seen to be all the more pressing following events in the Spanish enclaves in North Africa of Ceuta and Melilla in 2005. Migrants attempting to breach security fences were shot dead by the authorities, graphically highlighting, among other things, the inadequacies of current European migration policies. Since 1973, the tendency in Europe has been for a zero immigration doctrine to prevail, particularly in relation to unskilled migrants. Thus, the older European immigration countries have continued to implement