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UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI TRIESTE Sede amministrativa del Dottorato di Ricerca Sedi Consorziate (IUIES) Università degli Studi di Udine - Università di Klagenfurt - Università MGIMO di Mosca - Università di Nova Gorica - Università Jagiellonica di Cracovia - Università Eotvos Lorand di Budapest - Università Babes-Bolyai di Cluj-Napoca - Università Comenius di Bratislava - Istituto di Sociologia Internazionale di Gorizia XXI CICLO DEL DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN POLITICHE TRANSFRONTALIERE PER LA VITA QUOTIDIANA TRANSBORDER POLICIES FOR DAILY LIFE Female labour migration towards Italy: the case of Romanian female domestic workers in Trieste (Settore scientifico-disciplinare: SPS/08) DOTTORANDA: COORDINATORE DEL COLLEGIO DEI DOCENTI DANA GABRIELA VERBAL CHIAR.MO PROF. GIOVANNI DELLI ZOTTI UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI TRIESTE RELATORE CHIAR.MO PROF. ALBERTO GASPARINI UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI TRIESTE CORRELATRICE DOTT.SSA ANNA MARIA BOILEAU ISTITUTO DI SOCIOLOGIA INTERNAZIONALE DI GORIZIA Contents INTRODUCTION 7 PART I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 13 CHAPTER 1: INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND GENDER 15 1.1 CONCEPTS OF MIGRATION 15 1.1.1 The “actors” involved in the decision to migrate 16 1.1.2 Causes 18 1.1.3 Migration decision-making theories 20 1.1.4 Migration patterns and migrants’ profiles 25 1.2 GENDER AND MIGRATION 30 1.2.1 A gap in migration literature 31 1.2.2 The phenomenon of feminization of migration 33 1.2.3 The evolution of gender in migration research 35 1.2.4 Regional evolution and differences in women’s migration 38 CHAPTER 2: THE IDENTITY PATH: EVOLUTION IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION 41 2.1 PERSONAL IDENTITY 41 2.2 NATIONAL IDENTITY 46 2.3 MOVING IDENTITIES: RECONCILING PERSONAL AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES WHEN MIGRATING 50 PART II: ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK 59 CHAPTER 3: LABOUR MIGRATION LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK 61 3.1 INTERNATIONAL LABOUR MIGRATION LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK 61 3.1.1 International Labour Organization conventions 62 3.1.2 UN Convention on the rights of migrant workers 64 3.1.3 Labour migration policies in the European Union 66 Contents _________________________________________________________________________ 3.2 LEGISLATION CONCERNING MIGRANT WOMEN PROTECTION AND DOMESTIC MIGRANT WORKERS 69 3.2.1 International instruments dealing with female migration 69 3.2.2 Other policy instruments for migrant women protection in the European Union 70 3.2.3 The case of female migrant domestic workers 73 CHAPTER 4: LABOUR MIGRATION POLICIES IN ITALY. THE CASE OF FEMALE DOMESTIC WORKERS 77 4.1 THE IMMIGRATION PHENOMENON IN ITALY AND ITS LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK 77 4.1.1 Italy’s state-building and first experiences of migration 78 4.1.2 “Old” and “new” immigration paths: the evolution of immigration in Italy before and after World War II 80 4.1.3 Legislative framework: from the 1948 Constitutional provisions to the present national legislation 84 4.2 FEMALE IMMIGRATION IN ITALY AND ITS LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK 92 4.2.1 The role of women as imagined by the Italian Constitution 92 4.2.2 The status of domestic workers in Italy 94 4.2.3 Shaping the domestic work sector in Italy: the role of the ACLI-COLF 95 4.3 EVOLUTION OF THE DOMESTIC WORK SECTOR IN ITALY 97 4.3.1 Domestic work in post-war Italy 97 4.3.2 The 1970s and 1980s: the arrival of foreign domestic workers 99 4.3.3 The current state of things 101 4.3.4 Migrants’ integration and domestic work: a difficult task 103 CHAPTER 5: AN OVERVIEW OF THE ITALIAN-ROMANIAN MIGRATION PATHS IN RECENT HISTORY 109 5.1 ROMANIA: DESTINATION COUNTRY FOR ITALIAN EMIGRANTS 109 Contents _________________________________________________________________________ 5.1.1 Old-date Italian immigrants in Romania: the case of Italian commuters in Dobruja 110 5.1.2 Integration process in the newly created “community” 114 5.1.3 New-date Italian immigrants in Romania: the case of Italian commuters in Timi şoara 116 5.2 ITALY: DESTINATION COUNTRY FOR ROMANIAN EMIGRANTS 118 5.2.1 Romanian migration paths before the fall of Communism 118 5.2.2 The evolution of Romanian migration throughout the 1990s 127 5.2.2.1 The early 1990s and the internal “reverse” migration 129 5.2.2.2 The evolution of international migration 131 5.2.2.3 Causes and impact of international migration 134 5.2.3 Romanian international female migration 138 5.2.3.1 Migration towards Italy and migrants’ profiles 140 5.2.3.2 Romanian female migration towards Italy: features and profiles 142 5.2.3.3 Romanian female domestic workers: from care gain to care drain 147 CHAPTER 6: OLD AND NEW MIGRATORY PATHS IN THE PROVINCE OF TRIESTE 149 6.1 HISTORIC BACKGROUND OF THE MIGRATORY PHENOMENON IN THE PROVINCE OF TRIESTE 149 6.2 RECENT MIGRATION PATTERN DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PROVINCE OF TRIESTE 152 6.3 THE DOMESTIC WORK SECTOR IN THE PROVINCE OF TRIESTE 154 PART III: METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK 159 CHAPTER 7: METHODOLOGY 161 7.1 CHOOSING THE RESEARCH THEME 161 7.2 CHOOSING THE SAMPLE AND THE INVESTIGATION TECHNIQUE 162 7.3 THE INTERVIEW AND THE DATA ANALYSIS 163 7.4 METHODOLOGY: ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS 166 Contents _________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 8: A PORTRAIT OF THE ROMANIAN FEMALE DOMESTIC WORKERS IN TRIESTE 169 8.1 PERSONAL BACKGROUND 169 8.2 THE MIGRATION EXPERIENCE 175 8.3 EMPLOYMENT ASPECTS 179 8.4 MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS AWARENESS 186 8.5 LEVEL OF ACCULTURATION AND IDENTITY TRANSFORMATIONS 189 8.6 FURTHER INTERPRETATION OF THE DATA GATHERED 196 CONCLUSIONS 198 BIBLIOGRAPHY 202 APPENDIXES 220 Appendix 1: Tables 220 Appendix 2: Graphs 228 Appendix 3: The interview structure 233 Appendix 4: Maps 236 Introduction The present thesis intends to deal with the process of female migration, concentrating more specifically on how this phenomenon occurred in Italy throughout the past century and taking as an example the case of Romanian women who come towards Italy acting as “primary migrants”, i.e., moving on their own, independently from their families, in search of work and often in order to provide a higher income to their families and relatives back in Romania. The subject of this research is the result of some years of reflexion over three general concepts and over the interactions between them: labour migration, female migration and acculturation strategies, i.e., integration or assimilation into the receiving society. The study was triggered, firstly, by the growing interest in the field of female migration – an area of migration research which was completely ignored until very recently – and, secondly, by my growing personal interest in the way Romanian female migrants in Italy experienced the act of migration and, more specifically, on the way in which these female migrants managed to integrate in the Italian society, assuming that an integration process actually took place. I chose to approach the case of Romanian female domestic workers in Italy, a topic on which quite a few articles have been written, not to mention a lot of media articles and news which can be read or heard almost daily on this argument. However, aside from listening to and spreading the stories told by these women, it was my impression that very little interest was shown in literature with regard to the way in which these women managed to integrate in the Italian society. Furthermore, Romanian female domestic workers have not been studied yet as an individual group. This is why my intention is to analyse this group and to reveal the motives which trigger migration, the social and economic background, the daily life and difficulties this group encounters in Italy and how all this has repercussions on the way in Introduction _________________________________________________________________________ which Romanian female migrants manage to integrate in the Italian society. It is my assumption that, in spite of the much-praised adaptability of Romanian female domestic workers, they do not always manage to integrate perfectly into the hosting environment and that this is also due to the atypical nature of domestic work. Moreover, it is my impression that elder Romanian female domestic workers in particular experience more difficulties in communicating with the majority group and thus integration into the Italian society occurs much more slowly in their case. As a matter of fact, Romanian women are expected to integrate very rapidly into the new environment. They are believed to be very fast learners and to adapt very easily – or at least with less difficulties than other migrant women – to the new surrounding reality. This is partly due to the cultural resemblances between Romania and Italy and to the so highly- praised “Latinity” of Romania. Yet, little is known about the way in which this adaptation occurs and about the fact that the behavioural flexibility of these women is not always accompanied by a process of integration or assimilation. Instead, adaptation often occurs too abruptly, triggering a whole set of emotional and personal transformations which affect irrevocably one’s identity. Furthermore, the feeling of belonging to one particular culture, rather than another, and the identity changes suffered by these migrant women seemed equally interesting and worth exploring. As a consequence, I decided to focus my research on the situation of Romanian domestic workers living and working in the province of Trieste. The location was chosen because of my vicinity to this area (this is the place were I lived during the past 4 years) and thus better understanding of the features of this province and of its historic multiculturalism, given by it being a “border land” and thus home to many migrants. In order to better expose and analyse all the concepts related to the topic, I chose to structure my research into three parts, starting from a more general framework that analyses the theoretical aspects, continuing with a more specific approach towards the main concepts of the thesis, and ending with a methodological framework that describes the techniques used and further elaborates and interprets the data gathered.

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