Sabrina Marchetti

Marie Curie Fellow

Utrecht University

Circular Migration and Home Care? The Case of Romanian and Ukrainian Home Care Workers in Northern Italy

Office: Convento SD042

Tel. [+39] 055 4685 765

Email: Sabrina.Marchetti@eui.eu

Biographical Note

Sabrina Marchetti (born 1977) is at the RSCAS as Marie Curie post-doc fellow from September 2011 till August 2013.

After having graduated in moral philosophy at Sapienza University in Rome (2002), Sabrina Marchetti has specialised on issues of gender and migration, with a specific focus on the question of migrant domestic work. From a comparative perspective, she has studied the case of Filipino, Eritrean and Afro-Surinamese women working in Italy and the Netherlands. Her next project will focus instead on the case of Romanian and Ukrainian women working in Northern Italy.

In 2010, she has completed her PhD in 2010 at Institute for history and culture of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, within the Graduate gender programme. Her dissertation was titled “Paid domestic labour and postcoloniality: Narratives of Eritrean and Afro-Surinamese migrant women”. At the same institute she had previously undertaken her Research Master degree with her thesis "We had different fortunes": relationships between Filipina domestic workers and their employers in Rome and in Amsterdam” (2006).

In 2010 she has been post-doc visiting fellow at the Gexcel-Centre for Gendering Excellence of Linköping University in Sweden; and research fellow at the International centre for development and decent work of Kassel University in Germany.

She has presented her work in several international venues and she has a number of essays recently published or forthcoming on the topic of migrant domestic work (see list of publications). Recently, she has also worked as consultant for NGOs (such as Cisp in Rome and Iied in London) and other research institutes (such as Isfol in Rome) accumulating significant experience in policy oriented research and in organisation of events for the dissemination of research results. She has also collaborated with the Metoikos project on circular migration (2010).

Finally, she is an active member of several feminist and anti-racist grass-root organisations and research networks group, at the European level. Among them the migrant domestic workers' support group called Respect Network and the Domestic workers’ research network.

Research Project

Circular migration and home care? The case of Romanian and Ukrainian home care workers in Northern Italy.

In its recent documentation on migration issues, the European Commission has been promoting “circularity” as an effective and efficient way to manage labour migration from both within and outside the EU. But how does the employment of circular migrants exactly work and what are its implications for Europe's societal challenges such as ageing and immigration?

To answer to these questions, the present study focuses on Eastern European circular migrants and the elderly care sector. In particular, it draws attention to Romanian and Ukrainian care workers within the two Italian provinces of Verona and Reggio Emilia with the aim to assess the actual convenience of “circularity” for the overall improvement of home care provision. On this ground, it pursues three interrelated research objectives: 1) the impact of “circularity” on the employment relationship between care workers and their employers; 2) the way circular migration affects the organisation of home care from the welfare state’s point of view; and finally 3) the conditions which allow “circularity” to take place in an efficient and profitable way.

These issues are investigated in a comparative and diachronic way, looking at the differences between Ukrainian and Romanian migratory patterns during the period of 2006-2011. A further layer of comparison is added by the differences between Verona and Reggio Emilia, two towns with relevant dissimilarities concerning political traditions and public administrations.

Finally, this project contributes to the scholarly debate on gender, care and migration by introducing “care units” (i.e. the ensemble of subjects involved in the provision of care to an individual care receiver) as an innovative object of analysis. In order to assess the impact of “circularity” on these “care units”, a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods is foreseen for extended fieldwork in the two Italian provinces.

Keywords:

Ukraine, Romania, Italy, Social sciences, gender studies, Sociology of migration, elderly care, migrant domestic work, welfare state.

Publications

Books

Le ragazze di Asmara. Lavoro domestico e migrazione postcoloniale in Italia, Ediesse, Roma, forthcoming 2011.

Dissertations

Paid domestic labour and postcoloniality: Narratives of Eritrean and Afro-Surinamese migrant women , Utrecht University, PhD dissertation, 2010.

“We had different fortunes": relationships between Filipina domestic workers and their employers in Rome and in Amsterdam , Utrecht University, Research Master dissertation, 2006.

Journal articles

Georgina and the others. Postcoloniality and Afro-Surinamese care workers in the Netherlands. OSO Tijdschrift voor Surinamistiek, forthcoming 2011.

Io, noi, voi, loro: Intervista a donne della diaspora eritrea nell'Italia postcoloniale, by Domenica Ghidei Biidu & Elisabetta Hagos. Zapruder: Storie in movimento, n. 23, 2010 (edited with Barbara De Vivo).

Abbecedario coloniale: Memorie di donne eritree alle scuole italiane di Asmara. Zapruder: Storie in movimento, n. 19, 2009, pp. 90-98 (with Domenica Ghidei Biidu).

Le Donne delle donne, in DWF-DonnaWomanFemme: Rivista internazionale di studi antropologici storici e sociali sulla donna, n. 1-2 (61-62), 2004, pp. 68-98.

Book chapters

“We have a common past, a common present and a common future”: Postcolonial gendered memories of the Eritrean diaspora. In Caterina Romeo & Cristina Lombardi-Diop (Eds.), Postcolonial Italy: The colonial past in contemporary Italy, Palgrave, New York, forthcoming 2012 (with Barbara De Vivo).

Gender regimes e migration regimes. Il caso dei Paesi Bassi. In Isabella Peretti (Ed.), Immigrazione: La svolta a destra in Europa, Ediesse, Rome, 2011.

Eritreans’ memories of postcolonial time: Ambivalence and mimicry at the Italian schools in Asmara. In Jaqueline Andall & Derek Duncan (Eds.), Belongings: Hybridity in Italian colonial and postcolonial culture, Peter Lang, Oxford/Bern, 2010 (con Domenica Ghidei Biidu).

Eritrei romani. In Ginevra Demaio (Ed.), Osservatorio romano sulle migrazioni 2008: Quarto rapporto, Caritas/Migrantes, Roma, 2008, (con Lucia Sgueglia).

A comparison between European countries: Regular and irregular labour markets. In Isabella Peretti & Francesca Brezzi (Eds.), Welcome?! Network migrants and natives, Aracne, Rome, 2005.

Reports

When labour meets migration: the perspective of trade unionists and migrant activists in Italy, ICDD Working-paper, 2010.

Can we talk about a “postcolonial” cultural capital? The case of Afro-Surinamese women in the Dutch care sector, GEXcel Work in Progress Report, forthcoming 2011.

Presences, roles and associative experiences of immigrant women in Italy. Networks, migrants and natives: Experience nets, Welcoming nets, EU - D.G. Employment & Social Affairs, 2004.

In conference proceedings

The gendered construction of a “caring Otherness” (with Francesca Scrinzi), International Conference World Wide Women, CIRSDe, forthcoming 2011.

Reviews

Encarnación Gutierrez-Rodriguez, Migration, domestic work and affect. A decolonial approach on value and the feminisation of labor. Studi culturali, n.1, Aprile 2011.

Wendy Pojmann, Immigrant women and feminism in Italy. Feminist Theory, vol. 11, issue 3, 2010.