LIBRI DI ISABELLA CRESPI

Il costante aumento del numero degli italiani residenti all’estero registrato nell’ultimo decennio, ma anche la crisi economica del 2008 con i suoi effetti collaterali tra cui il fenomeno migratorio, hanno contribuito al ritorno all’idea dell’Italia quale paese di emigrazione. Tuttavia, gli studi incentrati sulla recente emigrazione italiana sono ancora scarsi o poco omogenei. Il presente articolo è quindi sì, dedicato all’emigrazione italiana in Belgio al fine di arricchire il pano-rama delle conoscenze disponibili sul tema, offrendo però una lettura intergenera-zionale del fenomeno, andando ad indagare alcune delle relazioni esistenti tra le diverse generazioni di migranti che oggi, all’interno delle comunità estere si trovano a coesistere. Dall’analisi del materiale narrativo raccolto intervistando italiani residenti in Belgio è stato quindi possibile mettere in evidenza l’evoluzione della comunità italiana in un reale confronto tra emigrazione passata ed emigrazione attuale allo scopo di comprender meglio i fenomeni migratori più recenti.

Scopo del presente contributo è di mostrare come, perché e in che misura i metodi qualitativi sono utili e adeguati allo studio delle relazioni sociali nella prospettiva della sociologia relazionale. La crescente importanza della riflessività negli studi relazionali e nella ricerca qualitativa è un elemento cruciale da prendere in considerazione nelle società post moderne. Questo contributo guarda agli aspetti ontologici, epistemologici e metodologici di questo intreccio tra teoria e metodi, e cerca di mettere in luce come i due interagiscano e diano luogo a intersezioni sia dal punto di vista della riflessione sia facendo riferimento a un caso emblematico di ricerca sul campo. I metodi qualitativi danno un valore aggiunto alla sociologia relazionale, in particolare per quanto riguarda l’analisi degli aspetti culturali e simbolici, i processi riflessivi in atto nella ricerca e la comprensione dei contesti sociali.

In western countries women’s social and economic status is clearly different from the past decades even if some evidences show that part of the transformation is not yet complete. There are positive aspects: such as increasing labour market participation and life expectancy, but still some are negative, as the difficult balance between work and family time, paid and unpaid work, motherhood protection, care time pressure for relatives, together with the effects of these unsolved issues on the future of women in the retirement age, that is one new emerging aspect of gender inequalities. Pension levels in the EU are significantly gendered. Various reforms of the pension systems explicitly aim at improving women’s opportunities to build up pension entitlements. At the same time, however, other seemingly gender-neutral reforms generally tend to have the opposite effect. These measures include changes in pension calculation norms and pension composition, increasing the importance of non-public pensions. This article analyses the multiplicity of reasons for gender differentiated pension levels and how patterns of employment and pension disadvantage according to marital and maternal status differ between earlier and later generations of women.

Le famiglie miste sono un micro esempio di cosa significa vivere in una società multiculturale a livello macro. Differenze e somiglianze sono esperite ogni giorno all’interno della coppia, nelle relazioni con le generazioni (i figli e i genitori), richiedendo all’intero gruppo familiare di ridefinire la gestione delle relazioni interculturali. Scopo del volume è contribuire all’analisi del rapporto tra relazioni familiari, differenze culturali e processi migratori.

Avendo sullo sfondo la tradizione che affonda le sue radici nel pragmatismo americano e nell’interazionismo simbolico di Mead, il volume propone un’analisi della relazione tra riflessività personale e dimensione dialogica del sé. Tenendosi lontani dagli scogli del sociologismo e del postmodernismo, i saggi presentati intendono ritrovare una giusta collocazione a un sé che è incastonato nelle relazioni sociali e linguistiche, ma che sempre le eccede attraverso la riflessività.

Gender differences, family and reconciliation policies in Europe: some critical Aspects (by Isabella Crespi) - ABSTRACT: Gender mainstreaming is the major global strategy for the promotion of gender equality. European Union has been focusing increasing attention on gender issues, and especially on considerations on the female condition. Recent developments in European countries are that more and more women are joining the labour force, birth rates are declining and social policies are mainly orienting their measures towards gender equality. Gender mainstreaming process and strategy and gender equality principle seems to become the core of every policy related to reconciliation policies, family policies and even employment ones. These problems, set within a European framework of public spending cuts, make it difficult to maintain and sustain the current type of welfare state. The paper focuses on the relation between family and gender mainstreaming to stress, if and how, the debate on the topic of reconciliation policies, family policies and gender issues are implemented in the European social policy systems. Although some significant improvements have certainly been made especially in terms of women’s emancipation, gender equity and maternity policies it should however be noticed that some fundamental issues still remain unresolved and continue to pose problems. Many studies highlight the need for a more deepened approach to gender, family and work relationship. In recent years great attention as been given to family well-being effects in workplace and to community studies. In this sense gender policies, that emphasise the importance of dialogue, practice and negotiation in the relationship among men and women/work and family/ individuals and institutions, fail in catching the specific relationality of this process. These push forward in order to consider the possibility to involve more social subjects in the redefinition of social policies facilitating work-family balance. The family is finding it difficult to face the challenges posed by the economic sphere, which is increasingly intrusive (it suffices to think of fragmented work schedules, which sometimes are in conflict with family needs) and demanding (like in the perception that the family should be subsidiary to work). The lack of attention towards family welfare results in a tendency to consider family policies as provisions to be addressed always and exclusively to individuals and not to the relationships between them. The new challenge seems to be the need to reconcile gender, family and work not only through policies but in their basic meaning for individual life; people experiences different spheres of life as an intertwined process, not artificially separable.

Sex, gender and identity are the core issues of this paper. The relationship among these concepts is analyzed by the author in the light of the wide and multidisciplinary paramount of those approaches collected in the tradition of the so-called gender studies. The author illustrates the main theoretical approaches to the sex/gender debate. Finally she suggests to pay attention to the need for a new relational approach to gender issues and to its potentialities for further developments in gender studies.