Paper short abstract:

This paper is part of my PhD project. It sheds light on how Moroccan women of different generations migrated to Italy live, and present their discourses and practices related to the processes of marriage and family formation. It is a work based on ethnographic methods and in-depth biographical interviews.

Paper long abstract:

I based my work on some questions raised in debates across Europe on family and migration issues with the aim of exploring if, to what extent and how transformation and diversification of marriage and family models occur within a framework of international migration.

In this study I pursue a multi-sited and multi-method approach that draws on ethnographic methods, and biographical methods.

I interviewed young Moroccan women and their mothers living in the North of Italy. I take into consideration transnational women's life experiences, both in Italy and in the country of origin, where I have spent a period of research.

In the in-depth biographical interviews I took a closer look at how women claim, reject, or otherwise redefine discourses and practices with respect to marriage and family issues, both in the public and the private spheres. In particular, the interviews focus on some specific topics such as the diversity of constructions of gender roles and relations, marriage strategies, family forms and arrangements. I am interested in understanding how, from an intra and intergenerational perspective, these discourses and practices are constituted and reworked in, by and through the processes of migration.

The dissertation aims at providing, from an intersectional perspective, rich insights into the agency of migrant women in shaping the societies they live in, subjectively in the self-identities they produce and materially in the ways they act upon their circumstances.