RIGHT(S) OPPORTUNITIES. THE CASE OF OVERSEAS NURSES AND RE-QUALIFIED HEALTH AUXILIARY PROFESSIONALS IN MILAN

The topic of this research, in the light of feminization and differentiation emerging as features in contemporary migrations (Castles and Miller 2009; Anthias and Lazaridis 2000), is an effort to expand the field of analysis in migration studies, by including women as ‘skilled’ workers. Drawing on the Capability Approach (CA) (Sen 1992), this thesis will investigate skilled and semi-skilled transnational waged care workers. The study focuses on female migrant workers’ capabilities and the ‘social opportunities’ available to them. Social opportunities are looked into by trying to link agency-structure dynamics and comparing two different selected scenarios of ‘recognition’ in the Italian post-migratory context. Two paths are addressed: i. recognition ex ante – from abroad; and ii. recognition - ex post after a process of re-qualification in Italy, in loco. In particular, the case of overseas nurses will be investigated for the former scenario and the case of health professionals and semi-professional auxiliary health workers for the latter. The selection fell on those workers whose qualifications correspond, at least formally , to their achieved occupational condition. The object of this investigation is the ‘available social opportunities’, focusing on the factors and actors that enable and/or hinder these women’s capabilities of gaining a ‘suitable employability’ status. Two pathways of recognition are considered, analysing female Peruvian and Romanian workers, currently employed in waged care work in Milan and its surroundings, with a status of potentially permanent residency. The available mobilities and related membership statuses seem to be highly interconnected with the occupational functioning achieved by these women. The findings show tendencies of polarization, segmentation and stratification. ‘Civic stratification’, as intended by Morris (2002), will provide a useful framework to critically understand how, in these processes, the freedoms of choice are structured along varying axes of differentiation and recognition.