"Forse domani mi sposo.." Organizzazione sociale, aspetti simbolici e immaginari sulle famiglie romene in migrazione

"Maybe tomorrow I get married...". Social organisation, symbolic and imagi-nary aspects of Romanian migrant families - In this article, the migrant family is analyzed from several points of view: on the one hand, as a cluster of ties, practices and social relations; on the other hand, as a symbolic creation. In rural Romania, family embodies the basic social aggregate: it is the unit of economic production, as well as the main source of affection and individual identities. Build-ing a family represents a major step in the transition to adulthood: today as well as in the past, to young Romanians migration represents the means to accumulate the resources the new family unit needs. Over the years, this process has become more and more complex because of the changes occurred in the social, economic and political conditions of the arrival context. In Italy, the young Romanian migrants experience new ties, new residential solutions and new forms of sociality. They must cope with different conceptions: the way family is conceived in the leading Romanian thought, the ideas Romanians have acquired about Italian family, and, vice versa, the images Italian people have developed about Romanian family. The negotiations and growing distances, the strives and mediations that mark the en-trance in adult life, are placed in the social transnational space between Romania and Italy.

Keywords Family; Migration; Romania; Social representa-tions; Transnationalism

Pietro Cingolani, "Forse domani mi sposo.." Organizzazione sociale, aspetti simbolici e immaginari sulle famiglie romene in migrazione in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 1/2009, pp 85-110, DOI: 10.3280/MM2009-001005