Sabrina Marchetti

Dreaming circularity? : Eastern European women and job-sharing in paid home care

Circularity seems to be on the tip of everyones tongue and, interestingly, eastern European care workers and Italian employers are starting to depict this arrangement as their “ideal.” Yet these idealized descriptions still raise a number of questions. Throughout this article, the narratives from eastern European “circular-carers” and those of Italian employers illustrate the way commodification of care, transformation of gender roles in post-Soviet countries, and the precarization of womens labor (especially for breadwinners age 50 and older) influence individual desires and decisions and, thus, promote the spread of this migratory pattern.

Migrant domestic and care workers in Europe : new patterns of circulation?

In its documentation on migration issues, the European Commission has promoted “circularity” as an efficient way to manage labor mobility. But how does the employment of circular migrants exactly work? And what are its implications for Europes societal and demographic challenges such as aging? To answer these questions, this special issue focuses on migrants employed in domestic service and home-care work, in EU countries, as special types of circular migrants, with the aim to promote a scholarly debate on the convenience and the special challenges of “circularity” in this sector.

Does Italy represent an opportunity for temporary migrants from the eastern partnership countries

The paper reviews the dynamics and characteristics of immigrant inflows to Italy from the EU’s Eastern Partnership countries. In particular, it compares Ukrainian and Moldovan migrants, which are the most numerous nationalities. Even though both groups show a feminisation of flows, high participation in the labour market and strong involvement in the domestic and care sectors, our research highlights the existence of two different migration profiles. Migration from Ukraine, mostly mature women, is mainly temporary; on the contrary, Moldovans tend to be younger, with a higher share of male and family reunifications and tend to migrate permanently.JEL codesJ15; J61

Networks beyond nationalities? Relationships amongst Eastern European women workers in Italy facing the economic crisis

ABSTRACT This article explores the intricate relationship between Georgian, Ukrainian and Polish women working as live-in elderly caregivers in the province of Reggio Emilia, Italy. Their case shows how both elements of competition and of support can articulate the relationship between national groups that, on the one side, have in common some cultural, linguistic and historical legacies, but, on the other, have a different legal status in the European Union and positions in the Italian labour market for elderly care. In so doing, this article contributes to the debate on migrants’ social networks by pointing to the necessity of further exploring the boundaries that define people’s participation to the same circle of contacts and relationships that constitute their network of reference. From the analysis of 36 in-depth interviews with women of these nationalities, the article shows how the three groups have overlapped through time in the same Italian areas and how they have emulated each other in their migratory trajectories as well as in their employment strategies in the elderly care sector, but it will also underline how in some cases they have competed and been divided, especially beginning in 2008 as a consequence of the economic crisis.

Brave, intelligenti e pulite: le domestiche eritree e l’eredità ambivalente del colonialismo

Questo articolo contribuisce al dibattito sul lavoro domestico migrante soffermandosi sull’importanza della relazione fra paese di origine e paese di destinazione nell’autonarrazione dell’esperienza migratoria. Tale relazione viene affrontata mettendo in evidenza gli elementi di continuita tra questa e la passata dominazione coloniale. Basato su interviste con quindici donne eritree arrivate nella citta di Roma tra gli anni sessanta e settanta, questo articolo indaga il ruolo svolto dalla dimensione «postcoloniale» e dal lavoro nel settore domestico nel processo di soggettivazione che accompagna il percorso migratorio. In particolare, si utilizza la nozione di capitale culturale postcoloniale per dimostrare l’importanza, nei racconti di queste donne, della fase premigratoria, vissuta in Eritrea, in cui furono acculturate a specifiche pratiche italiane e alle gerarchie sociali ad esse corrispondenti. Oggi questa acculturazione e vista come una «preparazione» al lavoro in Italia. Alla luce di tali considerazioni, si argomenta la fondamentale «ambivalenza» del passato coloniale nel modo in cui le intervistate guardano alla propria esperienza lavorativa e di migrazione. Le rappresentazioni associate a donne migranti delle ex-colonie sono connesse con due esiti di carattere molto diverso: da un parte costituiscono uno strumento per facilitare l’accesso al lavoro e, con esso, il successo del loro progetto migratorio; dall’altra sono fattori di stigmatizzazione sociale e di segregazione lavorativa nella societa degli ex-colonizzatori. Le persone intervistate raccontano di una vita in bilico fra questi due estremi, in cui l’essere eritree ha rappresentato contemporaneamente uno strumento di autovalorizzazione e la ragione della propria subordinazione.

Gendered and Racialised Constructions of Work in Bureaucratised Care Services in Italy

Scholarship on migrant care work argued that we need to broaden our understanding of the international division of reproductive labour by incorporating into the analysis other agents of social reproduction besides the household such as the non-profit sector, the market and the State. In response to these debates, the article focuses on migrant labour within the bureaucratised care sector, by comparing Latin American and Eastern European women employed in social cooperatives proving home-based elderly care services in Italy. Ethnographic data are used to show how both the workers and the cooperatives’ managers negotiate racialised and gendered constructions of care work and skill. We argue that the dominant gendered and racialised perceptions of paid care as non-skilled ‘feminine’ work, which are at play in private employment, are activated in specific ways in the bureaucratised sector too. Bureaucratised care thus comes into sight as being in strong continuity with the traditional forms of care work, as far as the social construction of the job is concerned. However, it does represent a general improvement for migrant workers in so far as it allows them to achieve better living and working conditions if compared to live-in domestic service.

Europe 2020: Addressing Low Skill Labour Migration at Times of Fragile Recovery

In the current context of deep recession since 2008, acute Eurozone crisis since 2009 and fragile recovery as of 2013, managing effectively labour migration is crucial and at the same time it may seem a balancing act between opposed concerns: why would we need immigration if domestic unemployment is high? Why don’t we encourage more intra-EU mobility to deal with differences in member state labour markets and further restrict immigration from third countries? This policy paper argues that there are some labour market sectors where ethnicisation (these are “migrant” jobs) persists and resists the crisis effects: natives do not want to take jobs in cleaning and caring even if they are unemployed. Moreover, to be unemployed does not make someone skilled for working in the cleaning and caring sector. Such sectors have been so far outside the scope of EU policy initiatives for managing labour migration and there is a gap there that needs to be addressed. We propose here an EU level sectorial approach, particularly looking at the domestic work sector.