Globalizing Immigrant Networks: Somali Females Workers in Italy

The essay focus on the reconstruction of the Somali Diaspora networks in Italy. In particular, the special role played by the women is considered, reconstructing how the migratory process in this country has selected women alone, who maintain strongest links with scattered parents and relatives. These women work in the “flourishing” female labour market, taking care of Italian aging people. Thus the position they occupy is functional to sustain the families reproduction elsewhere dislocated, by remitting them money, often used by the relatives for their own migrations, towards North of Europe and North America. In this perspective, Somali women in Italy draw informal welfare guarantees through their migratory networks. At the same time, these networks are forcing circuits of social control: the global perpetuation of the Somali migratory networks is possible as long as lonely women give up expanding their social life - like having a family and improving their socio-economic positions - in order to carry on nourishing not really dispersed families.