Paper Short Abstract:

Based on two-years ethnographic research with women aged between 45 and 60 who have moved from various parts of Morocco to Northern Italy between the age of 25 and 40, the contribution aims to deepen the “time reasoning” that their mothering experience required in relation to their "having to move".

Paper Abstract:

In the 2020s, more than 400,000 people living in Italy hold Moroccan citizenship, making it the largest non-EU citizenship by number of residents in the country; over 60% settled in the northern regions. A solid mobility route between Morocco and Italy traces back to the 80s and improved rapidly thanks to different channels. Although initially configured as a predominantly male mobility, over time authors as Vanessa Maher and Ruba Salih have emphasised the central role qualitatively played by women; but, mainly through family reunification permits (or other siblings/friends related tactics), also a quantitative gender-balance have been achieved in the recent demographic surveys concerning this targeted population. As Alice Elliot and Francesco Vacchiano have similarly noted in two texts published in 2021, a heartfelt overlap between concepts of “migration” and “life itself” (or a “dignified life”) deeply embedded a large part of the contemporary Moroccan society. And when you both have to move and mothering, underlined an interlocutor of mine, then “it’s all about timing”.

Based on two-years ethnographic research with women of different generations and socio-economic background who have moved from various parts of Morocco to Northern Italy, this contribution aims to focus on the experiences of those aged between 45 and 60 who emigrated between their 25s and 40s. For many of them, pregnancies shaped their migration possibilities, timing and modalities, but how to subsequently manage “all the time” required of a mother “far from home” demanded a series of creative behaviours and inedited reasonings.