Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the digital practices for diasporic networking of Somali and Turkish migrant women in Rome, emphasizing a local and intersectional approach to grasp their unique quality. It provides a critical perspective sensitive to social class dynamics and contextual power relations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on examining the digital practices for diasporic networking of Somali and Turkish migrant women residing in Rome through an intersectional and locally sensitive lens, particularly attuned to social class dynamics. The goal is to provide a unique perspective for comprehending the development and expression of distinct forms of digitally-driven diasporic social connections at a local level. This paper contributes to the academic domain of digital diaspora studies by presenting an alternative and critical viewpoint on the epistemological and methodological approaches to studying the networking of diasporic individuals, particularly enhanced by digital media usage.

This approach is keenly aware of contextual power dynamics as acting within the space of Rome. I illustrate how these contextual power relations, along with migrant women's positioning in relation to them, play a crucial role along the online-offline continuum. This dynamic is integral to the process of migrants' identity formation, community-building, and the articulation of a sense of belonging in a challenging context of displacement. Consequently, my intervention seeks to broaden the scholarly understanding of digital diasporas by exploring the intricate interplay between digital practices, social dynamics, and the lived experiences of diasporic communities.

The empirical investigations put forth in this paper underscore how digital media practices designed for diasporic networking influence local diasporic relationships. By intervening in social stratification dynamics, these studies present innovative approaches through which diasporic women form networks and build communities, navigating multiple, overlapping, and sometimes conflicting feelings of belonging.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on an ethnography with emigrants from Sulcis-Iglesiente, Sardinia, Italy, this paper explores how industrialization and de-industrialization articulate with emigration and peripheralization, building a tentative framework to analyze some future trajectories currently emerging in the region.

Paper long abstract:

Sulcis-Iglesiente, a historic region in south-western Sardinia, has been often labeled by national discourse as the “poorest province in Europe”. In fact, the region presents a strong demographic decline, a notable aging of the population and high unemployment rates. An important mining area since the late XVIII century, Sulcis-Iglesiente has gone through a rapid process of state-driven industrialization since the 1960s, and through an equally fast process of de-industrialization at the end of 1990s.

Building on fieldwork with Sardinian migrants who left the region since the 1960s onwards, the paper aims to provide an understanding of identity construction processes linked to industrialization and de-industrialization using migrants’ narratives and representations. Drawing from migrant experiences, it examines the links between emigration and industrialization and their connection to broader economic and political scales. The analysis illuminates how the peripheralization of the region was and is produced.

De-industrialization in Sulcis-Iglesiente raises socio-environmental concerns about the future of the industrial heritage, opening up new scenarios connected with the emergence of new economies and industries (e.g. the industry of mining heritage, the tourist industry, the green economy industry) in the context of the “ecological transition”. These emerging trajectories, still uncertain and contested, raise important questions, that invite us to investigate frictions and connections (Tsing, 2004) between emigration, peripheralization and global processes of economic restructuring within the framework of the “sustainable development” imperative promoted by supranational institutions such as the UN.

Paper short abstract:

The community of Japanese residents in Barcelona is currently undergoing a radical transformation of its socioeconomic composition, reflected in new forms of public visibility, in a process in which the question of who is legitimately authorized to represent Japanese culture becomes a crucial issue

Paper long abstract:

The community of Japanese residents in Barcelona is currently undergoing a radical transformation of its socioeconomic composition. In the last decade, it has gone from being mostly made up of business expatriates sent by Japanese companies to their production plants in Catalonia, to now including a significant proportion of lifestyle migrants looking to set up personal entrepreneurial, professional or artistic projects in their new life abroad. Thus, what had hitherto been a temporary community of senior company executives and their families, that was almost entirely self-sufficient as regards services (real estate market, consumption, education, leisure) and socially invisible, has been transformed into a widely-scattered community that enjoys strong links to the rest of society, both through work and social relationships. Underlying this process are structural changes like the decline of Japanese companies in Spain since the mid-2000s, new models of global mobility, and the construction of growingly open societies. This has all implied the development of new forms of doing community, among which visibility in the urban space through Japanese cultural festivals and public celebrations is playing a key role. Drawing on ethnographic data, the paper analyzes this phenomenon by exploring the case of the 'Matsuri Barcelona' festival and the complex overlapping of discourses between Japanese residents, local government, official Japanese representatives and local manga-anime brokers entailed in the event's organization and celebration, in a process in which the question of who is legitimately authorized to represent Japanese culture ultimately becomes crucial.

Paper short abstract:

How can we make sense of return migration to a place where ‘there is no future’? This paper explores how (would-be) returnees to rural Paraguay renegotiate the meaning and prospects of a peasant way of life in light of a protracted crises of smallholder agriculture.

Paper long abstract:

Neoliberal development and global capitalism challenge the rural lifeworlds of smallholders in Paraguay and shrink their spaces of economic and social reproduction. However, contrary to simplistic discourses of rural exodus, there are not only people who refuse to leave, but also migrants who return from urban destinations in Paraguay and abroad. Why do they strive to live in a place where they say themselves, ‘there is no future’?

Ethnographic fieldwork in Paraguay and Argentina shows that there is more to return than nostalgic belonging or surrender to the “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) of migration regimes. It is true that ‘leaving to the cities’ is closely associated with hopes for existential mobility. But, sometimes, so is return migration. The paper disentangles this seeming contradiction by exploring how migrants reassess existential mobility as they navigate rough terrains.

The contribution looks at the permanent comparisons between rural and urban lifeworlds that permeate the transnational field. Focussing at three dimensions - security, belonging and hope(fulness) – it reconstructs how people stress or hide different facets of these, thereby (re)mapping spaces of opportunities. Although the transnational discourse is haunted by a dualism between modern city-life and rural backwardness, there are voices which challenge the futurelessness of rural spaces. Neither romanticizing nor fatalistic, they reimagine a rural way of life.

The paper not only helps to understand changing migration patterns. It also sheds light on the interrelation between social and spatial (im)mobilities and reveals how the comparative logic of diasporic existence (Hage 2021) transforms rural futures.

Paper short abstract:

The paper advances the understanding of the complexity and the implications of North-South and South-South gendered skilled labour migration, in the teaching, academic, and humanitarian sectors. It de-migranticises South women’s mobility and explores how this can de-colonises North-dominated fields.

Paper long abstract:

Mobility of high-skilled professionals is increasing in some Southern economies, such as Argentina and South Africa. Nonetheless, studies of these North-South and South-South circuits are scarce, as the view of migrant women in the South as under-skilled, unempowered social actors prevails. This paper seeks to advance the understanding of the complexity and the implications of North-South and South-South gendered skilled labour migration. Empirical research in a participatory, multi-country study was conducted (2020/2021) and involved women migrants in teaching and humanitarian sectors in Turkey, Lebanon, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and Pakistan. In the study we looked beyond the workplace to encompass personal and family life, drivers of migration, agency and coping strategies, and uses of public spaces. The trajectories of the migrant women are complex and undo dominant, stereotypical narratives that pivot around mere economic and professional rationales for migrating. Their personal and existential dimensions intertwine with regional, post-colonial hierarchical configurations moulding gender migration and underpinning teaching, academic, and humanitarian aid sectors. These overlooked configurations are gendered, racialised, and religious hierarchies, embedded with the historical and geopolitical relations between states. The experiences of high-skilled migrant workers invite rethinking our lenses to be able to interrogate and understand gendered subjectivities on the move, beyond Global South vs North dualism. High-skilled woman mobility to and within the South not only de-migranticises, diversifies, and de-Westernises women’s mobility; it also poses questions on how South skilled women migrants can innovate and de-colonise the North-dominated field of academic knowledge production and humanitarian practices.