Catene d’oro, sangue e amore: famiglie migranti e vita economica tra dimensione locale e transnazionale

Chains of gold, blood and love: immigrant families and economic life choices between "here and there" - The aim of this paper is to analyze the economic and solidarity practices that characterize immigrant family life. Immigrants’ intimate relationships often extend beyond Italy, and their life course trajectories, constellated by (more or less prolonged) separations and progressive reunifications, pose a challenge to conventional frameworks regarding family exchanges, circuits of help and consumption patterns. Choices such as building a house or raising children, are often made on a transnational basis, considering both sending and receiving context’s resources, limits and constraints. At the same time, re-locating family ties it’s not an immediate choice nor an easy process, and the "myth of return" often shapes immigrant’s imaginated future and hopes, after many years spent away from their home country. Drawing on interviews realized with immigrant parents and teens, we are going to unfold the peculiarity of their experiences, rediscussing some of the more commonly used assumptions concerning the amount, the logics and the directions of family members’ economic exchanges and responsibilities, especially in terms of gender and generations.

keywords Immigrant families, family solidarity, transnationalism.

Paola Bonizzoni, Catene d’oro, sangue e amore: famiglie migranti e vita economica tra dimensione locale e transnazionale in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 3/2008, pp 39-62, DOI: 10.3280/MM2008-003003