Workshop#9, Gender, Ethnicity and Nationalism:
European Perspectives
Security/Insecurity in the Migrant Experience: Perceptions and
Experiences of Migrant Women
The observations proposed originate from research we carried out in
recent years in Italy on the perception of security and insecurity in migrant
women’s experience (but an ongoing national survey on the issue also takes into
consideration foreign men), and, among them, even sex business profiles: night
club dancers and women that fled street
prostitution.
The antinomic categories of security/insecurity turned out useful to investigate objective
contexts and subjective experience of women (just as for migrant men), starting
from a point of view scarcely examined in relation to migrant experience. The
intent was that of marking a common thread among profiles of women apparently
apart in expectations and attitudes, though sharing the migrant experience and
finally the search, of new life opportunities capable of realising welfare
needs and aspirations.
Security
and insecurity examine the dynamic intersecting of material,
imaginary symbolic aspects of experience; in an holistic and crosswise approach
rather than specific and partial on just one issue (for ex. language, work
etc.). This is even more true for migrant women as one also has to consider the interaction or the
communion of life contexts, and the relations characterising them: the
household context, the one partly-governmental friendly networks and of
community groups one belongs to and the public one, larger, of services and work, of
transportation, of neighbourhood streets and of external contexts in general.
Private and public dimension identify different territories, though not
separate, of feelings and perceptions of in/security that are strongly
interlaced in migrant women.
But security and
insecurity are also categories that strongly refer to the relational
dynamic–them-us-them- of the migrant
phenomenon, also modifying the way we are and feel in\secure in our country.
The rapidity characterising modifications of habits, customs, values enriches
and destabilises at the same time the reference horizon of each of us. It may,
then, happen that in the context determining, in different ways, instability
and insecurity, for the natives and for the migrants, we become –us and the other- source of reciprocal
insecurity, emphasising that sense of extraneity that great social changes and
little habit and knowledge of them may cause..
The questions that oriented us were, then, the following.
Security needs and well-being (or vice-versa insecurity) of migrant
women, preservation of one’s identity, sense of recognizability ( and/or
inviolabilty) of one’s body, consequence of eradication condition involved in
each migratory process. Effect of comparison with the the other (in this case, us European women and men), in the modification of one’s cultural
codes, in the production of mobility or in the redefinition of those same
borders or, on the contrary, in stressing them more?
The ethic-cultural belonging and the modalities
structuring the group in the country of arrival, just as the family model in
which women are inserted, proved to be, at different levels, of opening/closing
conditions as to the surrounding context – territory, city, institutions,
services. These fuel, combining with personal attitudes, different perceptions
of in/security and consequent self-defense modalities (also in terms of greater
freedom, for example, some Muslim women wore, or re-wore, the Muslim
"veil", proving a redefinition of purports “beyond” those of
traditional religious obedience). New borders my arise between the "inside" and the "outside". The
“inside” of household contexts and of roles consolidated by interiorised rules
between males and females; but also the “inside” within oneself, the forms of
personal self-representation with regard to and/or the distancing from other
models of female life, of relationships between sexes, consequently involving
the dimensions of material life and also their resources and identity
boundaries.
The
contexts, gathering feelings and insecurity perceptions in the experience of
the foreign women interviewed, are very
different.
The most complex security and insecurity experience focuses on their own
image as filtered by the male body and figure: on one hand there is the body’s
visibility, its being immediately recognised as different suggesting to women an otherness image never explored
before. One becomes aware of not being the “centre” anymore, but rather of
being on the fringes. On the other hand, there is the ambivalence of the male figure, that can be aggressor
(real or potential) but also capable of providing security and protection. He
may, even violently, interfere with wishes and changes in the name of tradition
or may be a dynamic reference point of a relationship between sexes that
changes.
The
following are examples of what is intended.
Apart from insecurities
caused by basic difficulties -language, work, accommodation- there also is the initial disorientation and
the uncertainty of being in an unknown territory, standing for relevant, but
obvious situations in some way, especially on the arrival. Again, a more
general and deep feeling of in/security can be detected in the experience of
migrant women. It originates from the coexistence of ambivalent feelings
indicating an interior change in relation to the enlargement of one’s wishes;
it concerns redefining and making more complex the identity; a new view of what
is "credited" to the woman compared to the man.
According to some witnesses:
Had I not come to Italy, I would have never realised the differences in
relationships between man and woman … When I would talk with my husband I
always looked for an equal approach that I could not achieve. Then I realised
that many thought a woman had no the right to talk.. It is like this for all
African, Chilean, Filipino, Indian women … for all of them it is much more difficult.
Italian women have more opportunities to say their opinion”. (B.\41)
… I am not saying the woman is 100% equal to man, but we all are human
beings, we have the right to be respected, because there is the role of woman
and that of man. Nobody stands in higher position than the other. This is what
my husband thinks! He was not capable of doing anything around the house and he
has learned now… (J.\27)
These are ongoing changes,
resulting from the search for a new and original path between remaining within
one’s traditions as to the feminine role and adopting in toto Western models. It is an experience often shared by the
younger girls:
For now I just feel lost between Morocco and Italy… If you are in Italy
you don’t feel Italian , if you are in Morocco you almost feel a foreigner. You
just live in between two civilisations… (G.A.\19)
Being at the same time
"here" and "there", but not completely here nor there,
identifies a passage and an estrangement, and may produce uncertainties
referring at the same time to the identity of woman and to the belonging to
one’s country’s cultural-religious identity and loyalty. Many women’s
insecurities originate from being in the middle of a double set of stories and
values in search of a new dimension for oneself, with the fear to get lost
among the different coexisting faces.
It is important to be
self-aware, self-confident, to be able to have control over one’s life. To this
purpose, different witnesses talk of “gender” bents, personal resources
orienting migrant women –many women- to undertake a change pathway with a
greater adjustable attitude and curiosity than men. And this is especially true
when it comes to the complexity of issues concerning masculine and feminine
roles within the household, to women’s emancipation and independence, to
relationships within the extended family in the context of the complex relation
between basically patriarchal structures of society and of religious thought
and modernisation processes.
The difficulties and the
fluctuations as to how practically occur changes with the partner and women’s
wishes are often stated as a demand for “respect between human beings”,
appealing to the right to self-respect. (A. Sen, Development and Freedom,1999).
Another level of insecurity
is the result of negative or problematic relationships with natives in public
areas where one can experience incivilities, racism, suspicions and
discriminations (in shops, on buses, in the street), or even racist insults. It
is a misculture of the hosting country, the fear of the other -heterophobia,
maybe, more than racism, according to some experts, in order to explain less
violent attitudes than elsewhere – shutting out communication, and that may
induce the foreigner to a more rigid definition of her/his identity, ethnic and
cultural boundaries. Or, again, it may lead other women to try and disguise not
be recognised, creating a protection mask, by the use of make-up, attire, and
attitudes, hiding their insecurity. This often fades away with time; but
sometimes it is a defensive barricade that erects, a posteriori, on one hand a presumably “pure” and autochthonous
identity–the us-, on the other, an
“ethnic” identity, that is a “us” vs. “others”.
In particular, today in Italy, the body of
black women is the most exposed to incivilities and street sexual harassments
(but it may also happen to many Western and South-American women). Their body
is identified, by (Italian) men, with that of prostitutes, a “payable” body.
Black
women experience abasement, rage and impotence with regard to this mark of
"sexual object"; and their defence in terms of attire, ring on the
finger, the use of irony or of indifference, is not efficacious... The power
imbalance between the Italian male and the black woman, combining in her body
two social belittlements, two patriarchal oppressions –of gender and of race-
is here particularly emphasised. Sexism and racism, says bell hooks, are the
foundations of the “culture of the whites’ supremacy” (bell hooks, Yearning: race, gender and cultural politics,
1991).
A sad experience shared by many coloured young girls in Italy, as we
were told during the interviews.
These things I hear in the
street, … they make comments, very annoying comments, they seem animals.
Sometimes when I am mad I talk back, but it is obviously better if I pretend
nothing happened, pretend you didn’t hear ... because if you talk back you sink
just as low …
They are rude, they honk,
think all Southern women make that job! I feel deeply humiliated, don’t they
look at me? Don’t they see me?
The
dissimmetry between sexes that migration and the skin colour emphasise, is at
the same time a deep dissimmetry between countries, between “North” and “South”
of the world, between rich and developed countries and poor countries. Security
and insecurity, then, are experienced through the body of migrant women, they
are the result of dramatically unequal relationships in the possess and use of
resources, in the demand and supply of bodies for work. Such sexual and
“ethnic” dissimmetry becomes even more evident if we take into consideration
foreign women brought –consenting or deceived – for the sex market, in
particular, but not only, street prostitution.
The
condition of women working in street prostitution but could get away (the case we are studying), or in night
clubs with different roles (entraineuse,
dancer etc.), shows, though with its undeniable differences, how substantial is
the power tangle, the liability to be blackmailed, and how crosswise is the
boundary line –more or less marked- between self and heterodirection. In fact,
even in the second case, we detect an activity that can be classified, though
with specific characteristics, in the more general “sex industry”, producing
the huge migrant flows of “labour force”.
Anyhow, here the system seems less violent than the one ruling the
prostitution, at least as far as uncouthness and physicalness. Still, it seems
there is a sort of “trade” of dancers, managed by show-business agencies hiring
girls with the promise of life and work conditions very different to what they
can find in night clubs (in Italy and in the other European countries). Unlike
the prostitute, whose violent and “almost-slavery” experience is more dramatic
(kidnappings, trading, beatings, physical torture and sexual violence), the
condition of “dancer” is one of deep ambiguity, characterised by the fragile
boundary between freedom and constraint: as to one’s life organisation, to the
choice of the kind of job and to that of working with the “mind or with the
body” or, in some cases, of getting into prostitution.
If we consider the “strengths” – meaning the possible securities of
their existence – the mainly positive self-representation “dancers” make of
themselves and the self-confidence they show, is evident. Whereas those fleeing
from prostitution trace a life pathway marked by self-belittlement, insecurity,
lack of confidence: these are wounds that new relations among women and the
reworking of the experience may, with time, turn to a more positive
representation of themselves. They show both, more confidence –they have opened
their eyes on the actual reality of the world and have no more dreams or
illusions- and insecurity, relative to not being capable of enduring the
experience they made, of not being able to see the light at the end of the
“tunnel”.
We would provide a wrong idea, did we not emphasise that all subjects
under examination –that experienced street or night-club life- cannot be
equalled to, even though their conditions are highly differentiated, the
category of victim. Almost all of them operated a choice based on needs, on the
desire to access new consumer goods, but also to the will of fighting back.
There is the constant presence of oppression conditions and of freedom
aspirations. For all women self-determination has to be sustained and
responsibility has to be enhanced, against the easy temptation to single out
only the weaknesses. In general, these are women playing an active role in
their lives just as “other” migrant women stimulated by the reasoned search of
a way out from poverty, to attain a good
standard of living for themselves and often for their families at home.
The
different stories of migrant women emphasise, though in their diversity, the
mingling of sex codes and of life conditions, combining freedom and constraint,
modernity and tradition, self-determination rights and human rights. The
tension due to the changing of relations between sexes can be detected, on one
hand, as the sign of women independence/freedom in fundamentally patriarchal
cultures (from Albania to Maghreb and Pakistan); on the other hand, we can
witness the reproduction of pre-modern phenomena, even though renovated in
modalities and in the violence of entirety, such as the fixity of traditionally
power roles between male and female whose centrality is determined by money
mediation and by the possess of the feminine body.
The
issue of "citizenship" in Western countries somehow summarises this
conflicting complexity resulting from gender transformations and identifies a
crucial point in the affirmation of “human rights” ethics capable of hosting
the difficult balance between universal rights and the respect of differences.
LeNove, studi e ricerche sociali, Modena-Roma,
Italy