Maurizio Ambrosini, university of Milan, editor of the journal “Mondi migranti” Transnational and rejoined families

Immigration and immigrant families “we wanted arms, but actually families have arrived ” The transition from the immigration of singles to the immigration of families as a crucial passage: immigration become settled immigrant families: a resource for integration, or the nest of parallel lives?

A paradoxical relationship Today, over 50% of immigrants in Italy are women They arrive more and more alone, as breadwinner They find jobs in Italian families, now more and more with the elderly: a niche of the labour market not very hit by the economic crisis Many of them have familiy charges: they have to entrust their children to other caregivers (mainly, maternal grandmothers) So they form the so-called “transnational families” The reaffirmation here of the family as the crucial site for care is based on the destabilization of families there (see: M.Ambrosini, Immigrazione irregolare e welfare invisibile: il lavoro di cura attraverso i confini, Il Mulino, 2013).

Transnational families Migrant families as “imagined communities” or social units struggling to save their emotional and social bonds? Frontiering and relativising The crucial role of caring (also at a distance) The multiple kinds of care: phone calls, gifts, visits, skype and chat…. The suffering of transnational mothering

Three types of transnational families Circulating families Intergenerational families Families centered on children

From transnational families to family reunion In a democratic State, it is possible to obstruct and delay family reunions, but not to prevent them (role of the Courts in the ‘60) So transnational families tend to transform into reunited families Now, reunions with “reversed roles”: the husband as the reuniteds member, and the following problems The “three families of migrants” The reunion is not a happy end, but a new beginning

Families in emigration Conventional visions: between “bearers of social problems” and “true traditional families” Dynamic interaction between diverse practices and ways of life The practical emancipation of working wives, against the marginal life of reunited wives staying at home as housewives