Ionela Vlase, Donne rumene migranti e lavoro domestico in Italia / Rumanian Migrant Women and Housework in Italy, pp. 6-22
The aim of this article is to focus the importance of the gender approach in the analysis of contemporaneous migrations for work reason, and this starting from an empirical research on migration of a rural Rumanian population in Rome. Even if housework has made a long course before being recognized as work, we cannot ignore the role played by the migrant women in development and in defining that area of activity, above all in Italy where the demand for domestic help literally bursts out in the last three decades. This specific working reality, above all developing itself as hidden economy, creates the niche for the economic inclusion of migrant Rumanian women. The connection of migrant men and women towards the work carried out by them is a key element of the analysis. The way of thinking of the origin society towards the migration for working reason of men and women also changes thanks to the influence of the migration process itself.
Deborah Scolart, Emancipazione ed emigrazione femminile islamica / Islamic Female Emancipation and Emigration, pp. 23-41
The Islamic woman moving toward Europe meets a juridical environment in which the emancipation of women can be considered in positive terms. The study of laws and case-law shows a non homogeneous attitude toward female problems related to migrant women that goes from a sort of cultural discrimination to the recognition of significant opportunities to improve her juridical conditions. Marriage, health and education are the key words used to understand the relations between Italian laws on foreigners and the protection of women rights.
Giovanni Baglio, Angela Spinelli, Gabriella Guasticchi, La salute delle donne immigrate in Italia e nel Lazio / Immigrant Women Health in Italy and in Lazio, pp. 43-58
This article describes the health situation of immigrant women in Italy, in particular it deals with reproductive health. Immigrant women are generally young, in good health and they use the health services mainly for conditions related to reproduction (pregnancy, delivery and induced abortion). Their deprived socio-economic conditions and their reduced access to health services are identified as the main determinants of negative health outcomes in this population, especially during pregnancy and delivery. They are more likely to request an induced abortion; their induced abortion rate is three times higher than the one of Italian women. In conclusion, this review underlines the need to improve accessibility to social and health services and to plan public health interventions for the prevention of induced abortion.
Stefania Alotta, Emigrazione femminile e ricerca sociologica / Women Emigration and Sociological Research, pp. 59-75
The analysis of the relation strategies adopted by migrant women in connection with fellow countrymen and autochthons of both sexes press for the recovery of the tradition of studies and qualitative researches on emigration. This way the constancy of the reference to the value systems, symbols and attitudes and the central position of the category of the “change” in the survey and in the interpretation of dynamics through which the migration experience is achieved, find its own fulfilment. Substantial ambition of the implementation of qualitative methods to the studies on female emigration is the one of recognizing to women the role of active agents of the change in the meaning of difficult, irregular and often illegal path, towards emancipation. The article suggests the soundness of the recurrence to the instruments of the “mutual tale” or “group tale” “among” women and the autobiographical novel “of” migrant women as intermediaries of real and complete travels into mind, remembrance, past experiences, in the positive and negative aspects, in the pleasant matters and in the difficult paths that are the focus of living and living together according to the female way. All the participant women to the tale and all the beneficiaries of the tale (listeners or readers) – including the searcher – then become partners of a journey towards the mutual acquaintance, comprehension and intercultural dialogue.
Sabina Mazza, Le migrazioni e la cooperazione euro-mediterranea / Migrations and the Euro-Mediterranean Cooperation, pp. 77-98
In the last few years the Mediterranean area has a fundamental role in the world economic and political stability. It constitutes the area where different demographic, economic and social situations live together. Firstly, the paper describes the migration flows moving out the Mediterranean basin toward south European countries. Then, it analyses the push and pull factors, and main demographic and economic indicators both for EU and non EU Mediterranean countries: demographic differentials are particularly relevant in the Mediterranean basin, even if there are encouraging signs of convergence. Analysing the different economic levels too, we can expect migratory pressure from south to north to be still intense in the next few years. It examines also a new challenge for all countries: the transit migration. One of most relevant changes in the field of cooperation and development is that the EU governments consider now migrations no more as a domestic problem, but as a global problem to be settled not unilaterally, but with a close cooperation among all countries involved in the migration flows. The European Union is called to carry out a task for managing international movements and for enhancing the migrants integration. In the end, it analyses if the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and the related cooperation activities are still able to constitute a potential response to the crisis of the area, allowing the cohesion and the economic and social development, with new financial instruments in addition to the existing.
Ghilda Pensante, La devianza minorile nell’ambito delle minoranze etniche. Le esperienze di Coventry e Milano / The juvenile deviancy in the ethnic minorities. The Coventry and Milan experiences, pp. 99-114
This work is concerned with juvenile delinquency within black and ethnic minority groups. It aims to monitor the different kinds of intervention structured in two European contexts, the British and the Italian one, in order to tackle a problem that deserves the institutions’ specific attention. In Britain, the Blacks’ overrepresentation in the prison system reveals the partial inefficacy of the Government’s anti-racial acts and strategies meant to face harassments of any kind in social and civil life. As for the more recent migratory floods, a meaningful lack concerns the shortage of cultural mediators in courts and in other institutions for young people that provide for a cooperation with interpreters whose tasks are only linguistic. The difference between a mediation and a translation duty is evident. A need, the one of the cultural mediation, that has already been noticed in Italy, where among the lacks underlined there is the short number of rehabilitation and integration centres for young foreigners. In the mentioned centres, which are meant to be dedicated to minors involved in illegal behaviours or police investigations, they also have the opportunity to follow probation programmes: although the percentage of escapes from these centres is very high, this value of measure is undeniable from an educational point of view.
Luca Di Sciullo, Franco Pittau, Luigi Gaffuri, L’integrazione territoriale degli immigrati in Italia. Caratteristiche, limiti, prospettive del terzo Rapporto CNEL/Caritas / The territorial Integration of Immigrants in Italy. Features, limits, perspectives of the Third CNEL/Caritas Report, pp. 115-129
Estimating the integration degree of foreigners in Italy is ambitious and problematic, because it deals with integration, that, involving many aspects, can have different meanings. We have, then, to return to the dimensions of a qualitative phenomenon, the “measure” of which, if it is not a sample investigation, is possible only through numbers that draw an accurate picture of a real process. So, after processing hundred of statistic data, not homogeneous as for regional level, we have selected twenty as indicators. These indicators have been, afterwards, unified into four ratings. The scheme is contrived in a way that may be enforceable, to all the regions and for every indicator, a “points classification”. The addition of the whole points of the four indicators enabled to draw up the final list of the integration index. In short this essay aims at applying a more articulate reading model allowing an overall comparison among the single regions and so assisting to better realize the inclusion process of foreigners into the Italian reality.
Fiorenzo Rossi, Silvia Meggiolaro, Gli emigrati dal Veneto negli anni cinquanta del XX secolo / The emigrants from Veneto in the 1950s, pp. 131-152
The paper describes the features of the intense emigration flow that characterized Veneto from 1950 to 1970, by using a particular data source: the samples drawn from 1981 and 1991 Italian population censuses. We examine people born in Veneto who were living, at the times of the censuses, in Piemont and Lombardy, also by comparing with people living both in destination regions and of origin ones. The analysis of individual characteristics allows us to know if mass migration creates populations with particular features. Evidence shows that some aspects, as the disadvantageous social conditions are typical features of the selection created when people emigrates for economic reasons. But other aspects are similar to population of destination regions’ ones: for example, low levels of fertility and great female participation in the labour market. Finally, there are some characteristics that are different both to origin and to destination regions: we find high and anticipated rates of marriage, intense participation in the labour market in the middle age classes, and anticipated withdrawal from the job.
Romano Piras, I movimenti migratori interregionali per titolo di studio: una stima dei tassi migratori e un’analisi dei flussi / The Interregional Migratory Movements as for Diploma: an Estimate of Migratory Rates and a Flow Analysis, pp. 153-170
The main point of this paper is to estimate immigration, emigration and net migration rates classified by educational attainment and to measure also the magnitude of such a phenomenon for each of the twenty Italian regions during the period from 1980 to 2002. We take into account four educational levels: graduate, upper secondary, lower secondary and in a single class primary school and no title. The paper aims to give a data base to researchers of various disciplines first of all, albeit not exclusively, those of social sciences ones in order to pursue further works on this field.
Matteo Pretelli, Culture or Propaganda? Fascism and Italian Culture in the United States, pp. 171-192
This essay analyzes a neglected historiographical topic, that is the Fascist “cultural diplomacy”. After outlining the historiographical framework, this essay focuses on the United States as a case study. The political action of the fasci (the branches of the Italian National Fascist Party) in the United States had turned out to be a failure by the late 1920s. As a result, during the following decade, the Fascist regime promoted to the full extent the spread of the Italian language and culture in the “Little Italies” as tools to preserve the Italianness of the Italian immigrant communities. The purpose of this Fascist project was to shape the new Italian-American generations, whose members were American by citizenship but spiritually tied to Fascist Italy by linguistic bonds. Such a strategy was carried out in cooperation with the Italian-American press, the promimenti (ethnic leaders), the Italian schools in the United States, and cultural associations such as the Dante Alighieri Society. At the same time, the Fascist regime, supported by the Italian-American lobby, endeavored to create Italian language and culture courses in U.S. educational institutions spanning from high schools to universities. Furthermore Mussolini encouraged prominent U.S. citizens, Italian Americans, and mostly youngsters of Italian ancestry, who were often guests of the Fascist summer camps, to visit Italy on propagandistic trips in order to show them the “achievements” of Il Duce’s regime. Finally, this essay examines the response of the new Italian-American generations to the Fascist propagandistic message.