"SaHa:lalla!" Pratiche di salute e rappresentazioni sul corpo nell’esperienza di un gruppo di donne marocchine a Verona

The paper is based on a fieldwork with a group of moroccan women living in Verona. The aim of the work is to link the practices of management of familiar health with ideas and representations about body health and illness in a context of migration. The thesis is built up around four areas: ideas and representations about health and illness in Morocco and Italy; health and social networks in the context of migration; images and metaphors of the body; strategies of healing. The main topics are: variety of situations of Moroccan women in Italy and in Verona, reference groups and social networks on the field, popular medicine in Morocco, “folk illness”, embodiment of migration and experiences of illness, relationship with Italian doctors, use of herbs and food to manage familiar health, creation and circulation of authoritative knowledge along the local and transnational networks, seeking for healing and therapeutic itineraries. The aim of the work is to focus the changes that migration brings as regard to the use of traditional medicine and as regard to representation about body, health and illness.