RICONGIUNTE MA LAVORATRICI. L'ACCESSO AL LAVORO DELLE DONNE MAROCCHINE IN SARDEGNA E TOSCANA.

Lately produced Worldwide literature on gendered global migration has shown a shift in perception from male migrant workers to both first generation migrants and transnational mothers, including East European women. However, Moroccan Women’s case study has been neglected so far. They have been labeled such as “housekeepers” or “Carer”, passive followers of their own husbands, not such as workers, also caged in a family microcosm where they are classified with identitarian roles like Wives, Mothers and Daughters. The research I carried out aims to get an insight on such a wide universe. We tried to understand how Moroccan Women deal with work both in Sardinia and Tuscany (two Italian regions very different in terms of Migration history and migration/work policies), relationship between work and family and the meaning that Moroccan Women give to work. Recent outcomes showed that Moroccan women presence in the local job market is increasing, despite they are still relegated in the last ranks among foreigner workers in Italy. They are mainly domestic workers by the hour because it looks like an accessible job for all those who have not a strong scholarization nor recognized degrees and still difficulties with the local language (…). We should mention also that many women have children and it comes that they have to merge work duties with family duties as well. On the other hand Work turns into a necessity for old Moroccan women in financial troubles and a matter of both emancipation from men and an identity definition process for the young Ones who aim also to create a solid base for a future family. It means a redefinition of roles and duties inside family networks also for all those so called “circular migrants” who live and work in Italy like seasonal workers. Once they came back home they start to work in order to help their relatives in managing shops that sell “Made in Italy” products. This “circularity” looks like a successful example of old and new work strategies due to the high rate of unemployment in Morocco and a new way to consider a more equalitarian kind of family. Hence outcomes show that moroccan women's rapresentation in Italy such as passive and scarsely integrated people, subdued by men's will and kept off from the job market by cultural issues that relegate all of them in traditional roles like Wife and mother, is simply outdated. It doesn't take in account an increased women partecipation in the job market neither factors related both to personal/social capital and local society that makes partecipation for women to the job market harder, that because they should be traditionally employed in a domestic space only. On one side mothers still find jobs nearly related to their everyday domestic activities, on the other young women try to find new kind of jobs that could allow them to keep on pursuing their goals (e.g. Studying) and their own identity.