Immigrant Working Mothers Reconciling Work and Childcare: the Experience of Latin American and...

Immigrant Working MothersReconciling Work and Childcare: theExperience of Latin American andEastern European Women in Milan

Paola Bonizzoni1,*

The aim of this paper is to provide an exploration of the work–family reconciliation

processes of immigrant working mothers in Italy, through the analysis of fifty-six

qualitative interviews carried out with Latin American and Eastern European female

workers with at least one minor child living in Milan. The study highlights the strat-

egies they followed to manage work and childcare under the unfavorable condi-

tions posed by the intertwining effects of immigration, care, and employment

regimes. These, leading to limited social and employment rights, also influence

their kinds of participation in the labor market and constrain the geographical

mobility of their family members, leading women to enact (over time but also simul-

taneously) pluri-local care strategies. While these can be interpreted as a further

resource available to migrant families, they can also be seen as the outcome of a

partial inclusion into the host society, showing new forms of inequality in the

access of social care.

Introduction

A recent body of research on the interconnections of migration andcare regimes (Andall 2000; Anderson 2000; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007; Lutz2008; Williams and Gavanas 2008; Parrenas 2001) has pointed out that inter-national migration and reconciliation issues are inextricably linked in post-industrial economies (Bettio, Simonazzi, and Villa 2006; Yeates 2005). Thetrend toward increased female employment, the care needs of an aging popula-tion, and inadequate state provision in a context of unequal gender relationshave promoted the development of different care markets across Europe(Simonazzi 2009), in which a growing number of migrant and ethnic minority

1Department of Social and Political Sciences, Universita degli Studi di Milano, 20122, Milano, Italy*[email protected]; [email protected]

socpol: Social Politics, Summer 2014 pp. 194–217doi: 10.1093/sp/jxu008# The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Access publication February 17, 2014

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women find work (Kofman, Phizacklea, and Raghuram 2000). Italy qualifies asan especially interesting case since it has witnessed a steady increase in thefemale immigrant workforce. The latter is, however, strongly segregated in thedomestic and care sector (Ambrosini 2013; Colombo 2007; Sarti 2006),leading to the emergence of the so-called migrant-in-the family model (Bettioet al. 2006).

Such global transformations have led several scholars to theorize the forma-tion of “global circuits of care” or “care chains” (Ehrenreich and Hochschild2003; Yeates 2005, 2009), a new regime of inequality in social reproduction(Colen 1995; Bonizzoni 2012a; Kofman 2012) in which female migrants fromthe Global South move to the Global North to work in the domestic and careindustry, taking care of family left behind at a distance. While this theoreticalwork has helped to bring to light the internal dynamics and the impact oftransnational caregiving on both sending and receiving societies, the work–family balance established locally by migrant and ethnic minority families hasbeen largely ignored (Wall and Jose 2004; Datta et al. 2007; Doyle andTimonen 2010; Dyer, McDowell, and Batnitzky 2011). An investigation ofmigrant care workers’ work–care reconciliation challenges could, instead, rep-resent a powerful tool to highlight how social care (Daly and Lewis 2000) isbecoming increasingly stratified globally and locally, leading to new forms ofexclusion and social inequality. Reproductive labor is divided along gender,ethnic, and class lines and white, middle-class families’ care strategies can havea profound impact on the family life of other women (Andall 2000).

The aim of this paper is to explore the work–family reconciliation processesof immigrant working mothers in Italy, through the analysis of fifty-six quali-tative interviews with Latin American and Eastern European female workerswith at least one minor child living in Milan. The study highlights the strategiesthey followed to manage work and childcare under the unfavorable conditionsposed by the intertwining effects of immigration, care, and employmentregimes, which also influence their participation in the labor market and con-strain the geographical mobility of their family members, leading women toenact pluri-local care strategies. While these strategies can be interpreted as afurther resource available to migrant families, they can also be seen as theoutcome of a partial inclusion into the host society, showing new forms ofinequality in the access of social care.

Reconciling Work and Family: Immigration,Employment, and Care Regimes

As Williams (2012) argues, the demand for domestic and care workers andtheir working conditions are influenced by employment, immigration, andcare regimes. The concept regime refers to clusters of state policies characteriz-ing particular countries or groups of countries, to cultures and practices, policy

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and popular discourses, social relations of power and inequality, and forms ofcontestation (Williams 2010 2012). Care regimes thus include the amount andkind of care provided (through payments, care allowances, cash benefits, taxcredits, services) by the public, voluntary, or private sector, in the context ofnational and local discourses on what constitutes appropriate care and whoshould provide it. They operate together with employment regimes: Labormarket divisions in terms of gender, ethnicity, migration, and nationality,reflected in more or less pronounced hierarchies in wages, precarity, skills, andsocial rights and protections. These, in turn, interact with migration regimes:Immigration policies governing entry, exit, and settlement and the attributionof rights to individuals and their family dependents, naturalization rules, andanti-discriminatory legislation.

Below we explore the interconnections of Italian care, employment, andimmigration regimes as a multilayered system of constraints influencing theprocesses of work-care reconciliation experienced by women of foreign originin Italy.

The Italian Child and Elder Care Regime

As in other Southern European countries, Italy’s care regime is character-ized by “explicit familialism,” as options other than informal family care arenot easily available (Lyon 2006): High levels of unpaid care in the family arecombined with scarce care services and public provision is predominantlydirected toward cash transfers to families (Naldini and Saraceno 2008;Saraceno 2003; Shutes and Chiatti 2012; Trifiletti 1999). Italian families are,therefore, strongly expected to take care of their dependent members, withlittle help received from the state (Anttonen and Sipila 1996). Extended legalfinancial obligations provide the basis for extensive subsidiarity in social andfamily policies (Knijn and Saraceno 2010) and the bulk of child and elder careis still performed by women (Bettio and Plantenga 2004).

Italian childcare regime is characterized by what Naldini and Saraceno(2011) call “familism by default”: A serious lack of both financial transfers andservices, especially for children under the age of three. While the employmentof (especially well-educated) women has grown it is still among the lowest inEurope—46.5 percent in 2011 according to Eurostat. Italian women oftenwithdraw from the labor market after the birth of their first or second child(Andreotti, Mingione, and Pratschke 2013) because part time arrangementsare not as widespread as in other EU countries (Naldini and Saraceno 2011).Lower educated women often find it more profitable to withdraw if theycannot rely on grandparents or other informal care arrangements (Bettio andPlantenga 2004). In Northern Italy, where women’s labor force participationrates are highest 1 and where childcare services are more widespread, morethan half of the working women with children under the age of two rely ongrandparents, less than one-third on a nursery and just one out of ten on aprivate child-minder (Istat 2008). Such intergenerational solidarity relies on

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geographical proximity: more than one-quarter of adults live, in fact, in thesame municipality as their parents (Andreotti et al. 2013).

For elder care, Italy is characterized by “sustained familism,” since services(residential and domiciliary care) are scant, but economic transfers, mainly inthe form of pensions and attendance allowance, have favored the creation oflargely de-regulated care markets in which female migrant workers findemployment. This partial de-familization through markets in elder care has ledto the creation of “new” jobs in the domestic and care sector characterized byinstability, low social status, low pay, a lack of regulation and invisibility(Ambrosini 2013; Parella Rubio 2003).

Female Migrant Workers in the Italian Employment Regime

Italy is one of the few European countries in which foreign women have ahigher rate of labor force participation than native women (Rubin et al. 2008).However, they are strongly segregated on the lowest rungs of the labor markets(Reynolds 2001; Rubin et al. 2008). Nearly half the foreign workforce is con-centrated in low-skill jobs and foreign workers represent nearly one-third oflow skilled and less than 2 percent of high skilled workers (Fullin and Reyneri2011). Segregation is especially strong for migrant women, despite their highereducational qualifications.2 They are concentrated in five professions—domesticworker, cleaning worker, waitress, nurse assistant, clerk (Istat 2008) and 40percent work in the domestic sector (Fondazione Leone Moressa 2011). Jobsegregation translates into lower salaries3 and weaker job-related rights andprotections, due to the high rate of informality—a long-lasting phenomenonin Italy4—in the sectors where these women find work. Informality is espe-cially widespread in the domestic sector, where half of all the undocumentedforeign workers are estimated to work (Istat 2010) but also in other sectorssuch as hotels and restaurants where immigrant women are concentrated.

Scholars have highlighted the polarization between well-protected insidersin the “core” sectors of the economy, such as the public administration orlarge industries and an increasing number of workers on fixed-term contracts,self-employed, seasonal and informal workers (Ferrera 1996). Young workers,women, and immigrants often fall in the latter category, experiencing weakattachment to the labor market, low remuneration, and often poor workingconditions (Marı-Klose and Moreno-Fuentes 2013). All this takes place in asystem where, in line with other corporatist regimes, work-related rights arestrongly dependent upon the kind (and presence) of a specific work contract.

While regular foreign workers are as entitled as nationals through insuranceand security schemes established by national legislation and contracts (mater-nity leave, tax credits for family dependents,5 unemployment benefits, andpensions schemes), employment-related rights remain fragmented. Forinstance, domestic workers enjoy only the so-called astensione obligatoria (twomonths before and three after the child’s birth) but are excluded from theastensione facoltativa (another six months that can be requested by the parents





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during the first eight years). Moreover, they can claim the maternity allowanceonly if they paid six months of contributions in the preceding year (or 12months in the two preceding years) and protection against dismissal is pro-vided only during the “astensione obbligatoria” while for most workers it lastsuntil the first birthday of the child.

A Mould or a Tap? Immigration and Employment Regimes

Italian immigration policies have traditionally been favorable towarddomestic and care work (Bonizzoni 2013; van Hooren 2010). After 2005, whenpreferential entry quotas for domestic workers were introduced, they repre-sented between 10 and 70 percent of all authorized long-term work entries andthe regularization of September 20096 was exclusively addressed to domesticworkers. Immigration and employment regimes show, therefore, multipleinterconnections.

One the one hand, undocumented status leaves few options than irregulartypes of work offering low wages and poor working conditions (Williams andBrennan 2012); on the other hand, the conditions attached to legal/regularimmigration status may also restrict employment to particular sectors of thelabor market and/or to particular occupations (Shutes and Chiatti 2012).Moreover, acquisition, conservation, and duration of legal status can be depen-dent upon employment (Morris 2001),7 making “choice” regarding entry toand exit from the labor market conditioned by the risk of losing residencestatus (Shutes and Chiatti 2012). This is why immigration controls are seenboth as a “tap” regulating the flow of workers and as a “mold” constructingcertain types of workers (Anderson 2010; Anderson and Ruhs 2010).

Immigration Regimes and the Stratification of Social Rights

Immigration policies concern the rules governing entrance and exit ofimmigrants and dependents through the creation of a hierarchy of statuses (onthe basis of nationality as well as reason of entrance8) offering increasingdegrees of security in terms of settlement and social rights (Morris 2002).9

Immigration regimes generate an expansion of statuses of partial membershipto form a nascent system of civic stratification which operates by means of dif-ferentiated access to rights (Morris 2002; Morissens and Sainsbury 2005;Sainsbury 2006). Immigration and care regimes are, therefore, reciprocallyinterconnected. The social rights of undocumented migrants are among themost critical areas of contention (Koning 2012). While the equal treatment ofItalian and European citizens is formally guaranteed for most (albeit not forall10) non-contributory social provisions, the situation of Third CountryNationals is more varied: contradictory regulations and Court decisions haveled to a condition of uncertainty, fragmentation, and fierce contestation bycivil society actors (Ambrosini 2012; Fasano 2011). The means-tested allow-ance to those mothers who cannot rely on contributory-based benefits isreserved to Italians, EU citizens, refugees, those entitled to “protezione

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sussidiaria”11 and Third Country Nationals entitled to indefinite stay12 and themeans-tested allowance for families with at least three minor cohabiting chil-dren is only available to Italians, EU citizens, and TCNs entitled to full refugeestatus and excludes those with other short- or long-term visas.13

Although undocumented residents are guaranteed basic health care, theyare excluded from most social provisions: The access of undocumented chil-dren to non-compulsory care and educational services has recently been chal-lenged (Ambrosini 2012). Since services such as creches and kindergartens aremanaged by municipalities the situation varies across the country. Access isalso vulnerable to changes in local government. For example the leftist Councilof Milan headed by the recently elected mayor Pisapia opened the enrollmentto children lacking residence status,14 radically changing the orientation of bythe preceding right-wing mayor Moratti.

Immigration Policies and Family Mobility

Some have argued that neither immigration policies (Kraler and Kofman2009) nor European citizenship (Ackers 2004; Askola 2012) do fully recognizemigrant care and reproductive work. On the one hand, since labor market par-ticipation remains the main path to inclusion into the restricted sphere of citi-zenship, dependent relatives—be they women, children, or elderly—enjoy“derivative” rights based on a recognized kin relationship with a worker. Onthe other hand, migrants’ dependent relatives are considered potential“burdens” for local welfare regimes (Kraler and Bonizzoni 2010; Kraler andKofman 2009) despite the extensive role grandparents typically play in facilitat-ing Italian women’s participation in the labor market (Del Boca 2002; DelBoca, Locatelli, and Vuri 2005). As a consequence, migrants depending ontheir nationality/status have to adhere to strict integration rules (in terms ofhousing and income15) to sponsor the migration of a well-defined set ofadmissible relatives.16 The Bossi-Fini law has, moreover, made the reunifica-tion of elderly parents increasingly restrictive.17 Several have explored howfamilies care from afar and the ambivalences of transnational mothering(Boccagni 2012; Bonizzoni and Boccagni 2013; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila1997; Merla 2013; Parrenas 2005). While transnational family relationshipscan be maintained as a strategy for combining resources from different localcontexts, they can also be interpreted as the response to restrictive family reuni-fication criteria. When migrants thus delegate care internationally, they best fitthe adult worker model espoused in neoliberal workfare policy (Dyer et al.2011), since such precarious and “unencumbered” workers can more easily becalled on at times of need and dismissed when such times are over (Anderson2010).

While all these factors can work to potentially exclude immigrant familiesfrom a mainstream “reconciliation care model” (Wall and Jose 2004), little isknown about the strategies immigrant families adopt to overcome this systemof constraints. Which strategies do they follow to combine work and care?





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Which resources can they rely upon (and where are they located?) to managework and care responsibilities under such unfavorable conditions? To answerthese questions, a qualitative research design, described below, was utilized.

Methods

Work-care reconciliation strategies were explored through fifty-six qualita-tive interviews carried out with immigrant working mothers with at least oneunder-age child in Italy. Latin Americans and Eastern Europeans were selecteddue to their high rate of female labor force participation and because they arestatistically well represented in Milan and surroundings. The women inter-viewed come from Ukraine (seven), Moldova (seven), Romania (seventeen),Ecuador (sixteen), Peru (five), Bolivia (one), Colombia (one), Salvador (one),and the Dominican Republic (one): We also included several Romanians tocheck the effect of European citizenship on local and transnational care strat-egies. Comparing Latin American and Eastern European women also allows usto consider the effect of geographical distance, since it affects time and costs oftransnational care practices.

Except for ten women who at the time of the interview were temporarilyunemployed (five were pregnant and five were looking for work), most inter-viewees worked in highly feminized professions in the low-skilled servicesector. Nearly two-thirds worked for Italian families as hourly paid house-maids (twenty-three), baby-sitters (three), and care workers (six, two on alive-in basis). Five worked as cleaners in private companies, five as trained careworkers in hospitals and nursing homes, two were janitors, two were factoryworkers, and two were employed as tailors in small laboratories (five womencombined more than one of these jobs): twenty-nine women worked full time,the others part-time. Live-in domestic work had been done in the past bynearly three out of four women: the rate of live-in workers, however, fell overtime. The few respondents who were able to get a more qualified position inthe care industry did it after attending a one-year training course.

The length of stay in Italy varies from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 19years. Except for eleven women (three Rumanian citizens who entered thecountry after 2007 and seven women who came through a family visa), all theother interviewees have experienced a more or less prolonged undocumentedstatus. The time needed to regularize varied from a minimum of 1 year to amaximum of 12 years, with the average time about 3 years. Nearly all thewomen were regularized through the periodical mass amnesties issued by thegovernment or took advantage of the yearly quota decrees for foreign workers;nine through family ties and two Rumanians thanks to EU enlargement.Nineteen women experienced care-work conciliation while still undocu-mented because they gave birth or reunited with children before being regular-ized. At the time of the interview, five women were still undocumented, five

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were entitled to a 5-year stay permit as relatives of Italian or European citizens,seventeen are European citizens themselves (Rumanians), nine acquired theindefinite leave to remain (Carta di Soggiorno CE per Soggiornanti di LungoPeriodo), and the remaining twenty-two were on short-term (1 or 2 year)renewable stay permits.

There are thirty-seven married or partnered women and nineteen lonemothers in the sample: The number of separated and divorced is above theaverage values among Eastern European and Latin American migrants.18 Mostcouples were formed in the home country and later on reunited in Italy:quite often women were the first in the family to leave. The husbands andpartners of the women interviewed are also concentrated in medium/low-skilled manual jobs, in the industrial and service sector: construction workers(ten), factory workers (eight), cleaning workers (four), warehousemen(three), drivers (two), billstickers (one), self-employed artisans (eight: electri-cians, plumbers, carpenters, gardeners, painters, mechanics). One man isunemployed.

Families show a high degree of variation and complexity with respect tofamily geographies and migratory models. Just five women had their parents orparents-in-law living in reachable distance: forty-two had instead (or also) sib-lings, siblings-in-law, or other relatives (cousins, aunts or uncles), while elevenwomen had no other relative living nearby other than children and (eventu-ally) husbands/partners. On the whole, thirty-six mothers have experiencedtransnational motherhood for a period that could last from 1 to 8 years: inmost cases, women gave birth to children, migrated abroad, and cared forthem at a distance; there were also three cases, however, of children born inItaly and returned home. Seven mothers still have at least one child livingabroad. The remaining twenty gave birth to children in Italy (sixteen) or werereunited with their children and husbands already in Italy. Fifteen women hadyoungest children aged 0–3 years; twenty had youngest children 4–10 yearsand the remaining twenty-one had youngest children of 11–18 years. To bettergrasp the critical turning points in their care strategies, the interviews inquiredboth retrospectively and currently into several aspects of their migratory andfamily history. The focus was on employment conditions (working schedule,formal/informal arrangements, salaries, paid leave, and work-related rights)family reunification processes (timing, obstacles, negotiations), care resources(service, networks, role of husbands, and children), and (local and transna-tional) strategies. Interviews were fully recorded, transcribed, and analyzed asfollows. First, a spreadsheet was created, summarizing the most relevant char-acteristics (i.e., country of origin, own and relatives’ year of arrival, juridicalstatus, regularization processes, number and age of the children, family com-position, past and previous jobs, hours worked weekly). This allowed us tograsp the personal, familial, work-related experiences of the women inter-viewed. Subsequently, codification of quotations helped to identify several key-themes. Interviewees were found through teachers, cultural mediators working





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in NGOs, trade unions, and charitable organizations in Milano and the sur-rounding area.

Managing Care and “Difficult” Jobs: Informality, Flexibility,and Unfriendly Work Schedules

Many of the interviewees have experienced informal work and one of themost striking consequences for the work–family reconciliation is the lack ofmaternity rights: of the fifteen women who were employed when they discov-ered they were pregnant, just three (a tailor, a clerk, and a live-in domesticworker who was fired at the end of the maternity leave) benefited from paidmaternity leaves. None of the others got maternity leave, because they wereworking off the books and/or because they were undocumented. Nine womenwere fired and nine had to leave their jobs to care for their children. Only oneexplicitly stated that she chose to stay at home to enjoy full-time motherhood.All the other women lamented the impossibility of keeping their jobs due tolack of reconciliation resources or flexible work conditions.

Job loss can bear especially negative consequences for immigrant women.Dolores, who was fired due to pregnancy, also lost the chance to regularize,since her employer refused to put through her regularization procedure:

In the meantime I discovered I was pregnant. The lady had started tocollect all the things to regularize me . . . but getting pregnant just aftermy husband’s arrival, in August, she didn’t go on because she said shewas sick and retired and she couldn’t pay for my leave. (Dolores,Ecuadorean, married, two children, hourly-paid domestic worker)

Live-in work proves to be especially difficult to reconcile with family responsi-bilities, leading several mothers to switch to hourly paid jobs, or to look foranother job when care responsibilities emerged. While live-in work has beenoften combined with transnational care arrangements, eighteen womenreunited or gave birth to children while still living with their employers. Infour cases, after the employers learned of the workers’ pregnancy or will toreunite their children, they were fired; in four cases, women kept their jobwhile children lived with other relatives. In nine cases, children were taken tothe job and started living there too. One of the women who followed this routeis Olga, a Ukrainian woman who, at the time of the interview was still livingwith the elderly lady she was caring for, the woman’s 60-year-old son and herown 14-year-old daughter.

I rented a house and my husband is living there with his sister. If I wantto sleep there I’m free to do so, but I prefer staying here. I usually gothere on weekends. . . . I have all my things here and I prefer doing all thehousehold chores because otherwise they (she refers to the elderly lady’sdaughters) come and do the things their own way (laughing).

Can the lady be left alone during the day?

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Yes, maybe just an hour but not more . . . if I need to go out my daughtertakes care of her.

And what about your daughter?

Well, she’s got used to it, she feels good here, she’s got her friends, shehangs out every afternoon until 6 p.m. . . . and if she wants to go toparties in the evenings she’s always accompanied by Giuliano (the lady’sson) or by her father.

Are you planning to change job soon?

No, I told them that I will stay here until the end. I feel good here, I’m sofond of her . . . they’re an Italian family that has become like my ownfamily. (Olga, Ukrainian, married, one child, live-in domestic careworker)

Taking the children to the job is the only option live-in workers have to stayclose to their children: however, it is a strategy which depends on the employer,leaving little room for women’s caregiving needs since the employers’ needstake precedence over her own. Moreover, these are extremely precariousarrangements, depending on the duration of the contract, which often termi-nates with the death of the elderly persons. While it is never described as an“ideal” care arrangement, however, it is often preferred to the physical separa-tion from their children.

Finding a live-out, stable job can be difficult and risky. On the one hand,finding such jobs requires time and rich social capital, and in the case ofhourly-paid workers often requires the successful match of several job con-tracts; on the other hand, when the time of stay permit renewal approaches,choice can be further limited by the risk of losing residency status. This was,for instance, the case of Carmela, a lone mother who, after having lost her jobwas forced to ask for a six month stay permit for unemployment (which, note-worthy, can be asked for just once) and, as a consequence, was forced to veryquickly find and accept any job not to fall into irregularity. The only optionavailable to her was a live-in job, therefore she had to leave her two daughters(aged 19 and 14) living alone, a “choice” that caused her serious stress andtrouble.

What could I do, I couldn’t find anything, either full time or part time,there were just live-in jobs. And I had so many troubles: my elder daugh-ter refused to eat, she was so nervous, so bad, the teachers called me totell me that my younger daughter was not going to school . . . (Carmela,Peruvian, lone mother, two children, live-in domestic care worker)

Work-family reconciliation processes were frequently jeopardized by theatypical and long work schedules (Dyer et al. 2011; van Hooren 2012; Wall andJose 2004), characterizing commerce, catering, care, and cleaning services





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(Istat 2010), not to mention live-in domestic work. Cleaning workers, trainedcare workers, and those employed in hotels and restaurants often lamented thestress of managing unfriendly work schedules: working shifts, matching workcontracts in different parts of the city, working on Saturday and Sundays allpose a challenge for reconciliation practices.

Several women felt that casualized hourly-paid domestic work representedthe only option they had too successfully manage work and care:

I’m looking for some house work, something like that. Because whenthere are school holidays, or when children fall ill. . . . If I work for afamily, I can say today I won’t come, I will come tomorrow, becausethere are those people that don’t need you every day, you know. . . . If Igo to a hotel, to a restaurant and I say tomorrow I don’t come after two-three days they tell you to stay at home, it’s normal. Because I don’t haveanyone to leave her with. (Magda, Rumanian, married, one child, unem-ployed)

I’ve always had occasional, sporadic jobs. Once I took a stable job (25hours a week for the same family) it was a wonderful job, really, but thenshe (her daughter) fell ill, she had chicken pox, she had flu, 408 fever . . .What could I do? I could not leave her alone . . . (Ioana, Rumanian,married, three children, domestic worker, live-out)

What happened was that the man I was taking care of asked me to workmore hours. . . . I said that I couldn’t because I had a small child, and hesaid if you want you can bring him with you. . . . Luckily I keep him withme at the workplace; otherwise I don’t know what I would have done . . .(Oksana, Moldavian, married, one child, hourly-paid domestic worker)

To understand the logic driving women to navigate among these possibleoptions, one must take a closer look at the system of formal and informalresources they could mobilize to manage care and work.

Managing Work-Care Reconciliation: Formal and Informal Resources

The care of pre-school aged children (especially those under 3) is oftendescribed as critical, also due to limited access to nurseries due to high costs,informal jobs and irregular status. While private creches and kindergartens arelargely unaffordable, there is a scarcity of public places where access is regu-lated waiting lists (Istituto degli Innocenti 2012). The latter in turn penalizewomen who cannot prove they are employed (such as those working off thebooks) as well as those women trying to re-enter the labor market after havinglost their jobs. When the interviews were conducted, undocumented childrencould not be enrolled in Milan public nurseries, and adequate health careremained expensive as the families do not have access to a family pediatricianguaranteed by the National Health System.

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I asked for information at the Municipality Office and they told me thatI could enroll him already at eight months but that I had to find a job.And now I don’t have a job. . . . Therefore, we thought that we couldsend him in to Peru for a few months, in the meantime I could find a joband then enroll him at the creche where they would to keep him evenuntil 6 p.m . . . (Flor, Peruvian, married, 2 children, live-in domesticworker on maternity leave)

The baby doesn’t have the national health care card and if he falls ill weneed to go to the emergency room, we don’t have a family doctor, apediatrician, I have to pay for specialists...

And I suppose you couldn’t take him to the creche...

Oh no ... not the public one of course. I’ve asked the private ones, butthey asked me for more than 400 euros and it is too much. (Oksana,Moldavian, married, 1 child, hourly-paid domestic worker)

The care of school-aged children is facilitated, by longer opening hours (from7.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. thanks to afternoon class sections—“tempo pieno”—andto pre-/after-school activities). Compulsory schooling is free of charge andalso open to undocumented children.

The role of formal care and educational services (nurseries, schools, pre-/after-school programs) in work–family reconciliation is important but notsufficient: the availability of informal resources remains central to managechildren’s illnesses and those days and times when services are closed (such asevenings and nights, weekends, and summer holidays). Successful work–family reconciliation is therefore made possible by the combination of formaland informal resources: the role of husbands, relatives, friends, and neighborsis essential to understand how care responsibilities can be shared among moreor less wide networks of people inside and outside the household.

The role of husbands is crucial because it allows women to reduce theirworking schedules: twelve of the fourteen women who were employed occa-sionally or part-time were in fact coupled mothers. The more or less active par-ticipation of husbands in care responsibilities depends primarily on thehusband’s work schedule: by working shifts parents can organize their sched-ules to collect children at school or to have someone at home when childrencome back. However, in most cases, husbands work very long hours, andmothers are the ones who are expected to “adapt” their work responsibilitiesto childcare.

The support provided by relatives is often limited, but not because womenare “without” extended kin in Italy: most women have in fact at least one otherrelative in Italy, they frequently see. In most cases, these are horizontal relation-ships like siblings and siblings-in-law, more rarely parents and parents-in-law.The problem lies therefore in the lack of inactive kin than in the availability ofkinship networks.





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First arrived my sister-in-law, then another sister-in-law, then my ownsister . . . but everyone was working. They helped me, if I really needed it,but they could not stay at home from their jobs for me. (Nicoleta,Rumanian, married, 2 children, hourly-paid domestic worker)

Women responded to this set of constraints in different ways. A common strat-egy was to enlarge their solidarity networks to get access to “lighter” forms ofsupport from a relatives, friends, and neighbors to who often are “kinscripted”in close intimacy and trustworthy networks.

If I have some problems, my friends (some Moldavian women) usuallyhelp me. They’re more than friends, actually . . . they were like moms tomy children when I was in hospital and when I had to recover from theaccident I had. One came to prepare breakfast, the other accompaniedme to the doctor, another one helped me in the evenings. . . . I also havea neighbor that always helps me with the grocery shopping. . . . Whenthey are sick or during the summer holidays my neighbor helps me.She’s an elderly retired woman and they have become her adoptivegrandchildren . . . when I’m away from home I leave them at home andshe checks if everything is ok. And if I don’t understand something intheir homework I can always call my child’s classmates’ mothers (someItalian mothers) . . . (Viorica, Moldavian, married, two children, hourly-paid domestic worker)

I gave them a proxy to collect my children at school (to the mothers ofher children’s mates). . . . And we also have some Italian people, who mychildren call grandma and grandpa, living just in front of us. They alsohelp us a lot . . . if I need to go out she comes and takes a look at them. Iknow a lot of people here, I’m not afraid to leave her playing in thecourtyard . . . (Alexandra, Rumanian, married, 1 child, hourly-paiddomestic worker)

Other women capitalized on their resources—housing, work, culturalcapital—to exchange care help with newcomers:

Could you survive just with your husband’s salary?

We managed because my sister helped us with the rent and the expenses.She took all my jobs and I showed her how to work so that she couldhave a stable salary . . . That’s why I told my sister to come (fromabroad), to take all my jobs. (Dolores, Ecuadorean, married, two chil-dren, hourly-paid domestic worker)

They helped me with the baby because I hosted them for some time . . .and they wanted to return the favor. (Lorena, Ecuadorean, married,three children, cleaning worker)

Who can you leave the child with when you go to work?

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I leave him with one of my friends, she always takes care of my baby . . .

She doesn’t work?

No, she still doesn’t speak Italian . . . When she finds a job opportunity Ialways go with her to talk with the employer. (Antonia, Rumanian, lonemother, 2 children, hourly-paid domestic worker)

As the above suggests, temporary hospitality, job training or temporary joblending, language intermediation, help in orientation to newcomers are all val-uable resources women can put into play to share care in a situation of scarceresources.

The role children play in allowing mothers to achieve a balance betweenwork and family responsibilities, thanks to their precociously acquiredautonomy, should not be underestimated.

He goes to school with his bike (16 years old, Down’s syndrome child). Ido what I can . . . but he can take care of himself. He cooks, he sets thetable, he makes his bed, he cleans his room. . . . I’m always on the run,but you know, children in my country are much more independent . . .my daughter at 15 was already taking care of her brother, here you seemothers taking teens to school by car. I think it’s wrong; they’re raising avery weak generation. (Marina, Ukrainian, lone mother, two children,tailor)

I went to the school and I asked the director if my oldest daughter (13years old) could pick up her siblings (7 and 5 years old). She said she wasmaking an exception for me and it was under my responsibility. And mydaughter was like a mother to them, she picked them up, she heated thefood, they ate alone in the evenings. They were not allowed to go out, Iput a home phone and I randomly checked if they were ok, I used toleave them the list of the places where I was working and they had to callme when they got at home from school. (Dolores, Ecuadorean, married,2 children, hourly-paid domestic worker)

And what did you do when you worked the night shifts?

In the beginning I used to leave her [ten years old] to one for my friendsbut I had to pick her up very early in the mornings . . . and she told methat she preferred to stay at home alone. At the beginning she could notsleep and she used to call me and I told her not to cry because the neigh-bors could hear her.

Were you afraid of . . .

Yes, the neighbor could call the social worker. And so I bought her somelittle birds to keep her company.





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I set the breakfast table, I phoned her to wake her up and I taught her totake the underground to go to school. (Beatriz, Peruvian, lone mother, 1child, nurse assistant)

While some women highly valued independence and proudly described theirchildren (positively comparing them to the weaker and spoiled Italian ones),they also regretted the lack of time they could spend with them. Women alsohad to confront their caregiving styles with the standards expected by Italianinstitutions (such as schools requiring an adult to pick up children) and somewere afraid of their neighbors’ control when they left children alone for a longtime.

Changing Geographies of Childcare, Between Localand Transnational Strategies

Interviews showed that childcare could take place in multiple locations, andthat mothers constantly evaluate care resources available at home and abroadto manage care conciliation processes. The balance of resources is subject tochanges, since care resources can incur crisis or progressive improvement bothin the country of origin and in the one of settlement, leading to changing car-ingscapes (McKie, Gregory, and Bowlby 2002) which women both activelymodify and have to adapt to. For migrant mothers, the first period abroad isgenerally characterized by transnational caregiving for a variety of reasons: ashort-term “save-and return” migratory strategy, inadequate living conditions(in terms of juridical status, housing, income), and possibly due to the lack ofconsensus among family members on the appropriateness of moving thewhole family (Bonizzoni 2012b; Bonizzoni and Leonini 2013). Informality—in status, in jobs, in rent contracts—is a major obstacle for women’sre-localizing strategies. To apply for family reunification, they need to regula-rize, and then show “adequate” income and housing, which can be a problemin the Italian labor and housing market. Iris, for instance, still has two childrenin Ecuador she wishes to reunite with but working part of her hours off thebooks means that she does not reach the income level set by the law.

Now I’m looking for another job because to apply for family reunifica-tion you have to earn a certain income and I heard that they are goingto raise it soon so I have to find another job to get the money they askme for.

Don’t you earn enough or do you earn off the books?

When I got my papers I started working regularly but you know thateven when you work 8-10 hours they are not going to declare everything,that’s the rip-off for us, not for them, they save on us and we need tolook for other jobs . . . (Iris, Ecuadorean, lone mother, four children,hourly-paid baby sitter and domestic worker)

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The progressive improvement of their living conditions in Italy and/or a carecrisis in their home countries were frequently mentioned as reasons forre-localizing care. These crises can have different roots: the pain that livingapart causes to parents and children, the sudden unavailability (due to death,illness, or migration) or the loss of trust toward the foster caregivers.

My parents were sick and it was too hard for them to take care of both ofthem. When my dad died I told myself if I can’t reunite them legally I’lldo it in another way because we’ve been separated for too long and mymom could not manage the situation anymore . . . (Viorica, Moldavian,married, two children, hourly-paid domestic worker)

As the Viorica’s statement suggests, these circumstances lead some mothers torisk illegal family reunification strategies and the consequences in terms of lackof rights and the reconciliation challenges that follow.

Some women also experienced care crisis in Italy, after having reunited orgiven birth to children: transnational mothering, therefore, is not experiencedjust by women with children born abroad, but also by women who face diffi-culties in taking care of children born in Italy. Olena, for instance, decided tosend their younger children back to Ukraine because they could not survive onher husband’s salary:

Why have you decided to send your second child to Ukraine?

Because with such a young child just one of us could work and just onesalary was not enough to survive . . . (Olena, Ukrainian, married, twochildren, hourly-paid baby sitter)

Several women also opted for more circumscribed transnational solutions tomanage care emergencies. Some of them used to take their children home tospend time with their grandparents during the summer holidays to manage theschool’s summer vacation.

Now my child is there with his grandmother . . . otherwise what could hedo here? The school is closed and it is a dangerous age to leave him alonefor too long. He can rest a little bit. . . . And I also feel more relaxedbecause working the whole day thinking about what he’s doing . . . it is abit hard. (Katya, Ukrainian, married, one child, hourly-paid domesticworker)

He’s going to spend the summer at my mother’s house . . . because theSummer Camp only takes children older than 6. (Maria, Rumanian,married, one child, hourly-paid domestic worker)

Similarly, several women mentioned “commuting grandmothers” that spenttime between Italy and the country of origin. However, this was only the casefor Rumanian citizens who can circulate more freely across borders, and whocan take advantage of both cheap flights and overland transports, showing that





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transnational care strategies have also to face the constraints posed by distanceand migration policies.

Concluding Remarks

In this paper we discussed the implications of employment, migration, andcare regimes for the work–family reconciliation of immigrant workingmothers in Italy. In Italy, as in other Mediterranean welfare states, a largelyinformal care market has developed in which immigrant women can findwork. While the care needs of a growing number of Italian families are, there-fore, met thanks to the work provided by immigrant women, little is known, ofthe way immigrant mothers reconcile their work and care responsibilities asresearch has mostly focused on their transnational caregiving strategies. Whilesuch arrangements are widespread they do not account for all their experien-ces, since both family reunification and the birth of children are increasinglywidespread phenomena in Italy.

Immigrant working women in Italy are highly segregated in low-paid,unstable, and unprotected jobs, with few opportunities for job mobility.Informal work was a widespread experience among the women interviewed,often but not only also associated with undocumented status. Job informalityholds consequences for reconciliation processes: maternity rights are verylimited, as suggested by the number of women fired due to pregnancy andunable to claim paid leaves. Work–family reconciliation is also jeopardized bythe unfriendly work schedules (live-in arrangements, holiday/evening or nightshifts) frequently experienced by the women interviewed: several womendeclared they were forced to leave their jobs (or to opt for casualized employ-ment) due to childcare responsibilities. However, this option was not easilyavailable to those women who needed to show regular income to renew theirstay permit and to those who needed a full time job to economically sustaintheir families. Lone mothers from Third countries entitled to short-term workstay permits are, in this respect, especially at risk.

Nationality, residence, and migratory status also condition the access to careservices and benefits: several women reported having been excluded, forinstance, from public creches due to their children’s undocumented status; inthis respect, also informal work can complicate the access to services whosewaiting lists give precedence to women in (regular) paid employment. Accessto services is especially critical for women with children under the age of 3,while care-work reconciliation is, instead, facilitated by the longer openinghours of schools which are also free of charge and open to children of undocu-mented mothers.

Informal resources are, however, crucial to successful reconciliation proc-esses. The lack of available inactive kin in Italy makes the support receivedfrom extended relatives contingent on their own work and care responsibilities:

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as a consequence, women followed two different strategies to organize care. Onthe one hand, they tried to enlarge their support networks “kinscripting”friends and (often Italian elderly) neighbors; on the other hand, while their sal-aries were generally not enough to pay for private child-minders, the resourcesaccumulated during their stay (such as housing, access to jobs, cultural capital)were often circulated in exchange for care with other migrant newcomers. Therole of husbands is essential especially in allowing women to reduce their workschedules: while those working shifts often actively participated in childcareresponsibilities, women were clearly the ones who were expected to reducetheir workloads to fit childcare. Also the role played by children is crucial,thanks to their capacity to become independent early and to turn from being acare burden into a care resource for families: while women often positivelyevaluated the support received, they also had to confront the different carestandards of Italian institutions (such as schools), and some of them actuallyfeared the control of teachers, neighbors and social workers.

Their care-work reconciliation strategies should also be interpreted in thelight of the spatial dimension. Interviews reveal that the care of children cantake place (historically but also simultaneously) in multiple locations, leadingto shifting geographies of childcare due to the (sometimes sudden) changes incare resources available at home and abroad. These shifts are, however, condi-tional upon migration policies binding the mobility of dependent relatives to(more or less restrictive) requirements depending on nationality and status. Inthis respect, Eastern European mothers can more easily take advantage ofpluri-local care resources, due to closer geographical proximity and—in thecase of Rumanians—to the freedom of movement across frontiers they andtheir relatives enjoy (Ambrosini 2013). Therefore, while transnational or pluri-local care can represent a further resource available to migrant families, it canalso be interpreted as the outcome of a limited incorporation of immigrantfamilies into the host country’s main institutions, leading to new forms ofsocial inequality in the access of social care.

Notes1. Marra (2012).2. The phenomenon of brain waste is especially evident for female foreign

workers: one out two is overqualified (compared to 20 percent of Italian women).It is interesting to observe that while for native workers over-qualification charac-terizes especially the first insertion in the labor market, it does not decrease overtime for foreign immigrant workers, showing how difficult it is for this segmentof the workforce to improve their job status (Istat 2010).

3. The average gross salary of the foreign workforce is 987 euros, comparedwith 1.286 euros of Italian workers: immigrant women earn on average 788 euros,compared with the 1.131 euros earned by Italian women. Salaries in the domesticand care sector are especially low (717 euros monthly) (Fondazione Leone Moressa2011).





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4. The National Institute of Statistics estimates nearly 3 million people workingoff the books in Italy, 12.2 percent of the total workforce (Istat 2010). Legally resi-dent citizens—both Italian and foreign—are the most relevant segment of theinformal workforce (55.8 percent) while undocumented foreign citizens (whocannot be legally employed) are estimated to be nearly four hundred thousandpeople.

5. It is worth noting that this benefit could, however, disfavor transnationalfamilies, since the definition of dependents includes only those relatives residing inItaly, except for European citizens, refugees and citizens of those countries thathave signed specific conventions on the matter (Cape Verde, countries of theformer Yugoslavia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Switzerland, Tunisia).

6. Berlusconi government, Law 102/2009.7. Workers from Third Countries enjoy a renewable stay permit which lasts

one or two years (In case of short-term job contracts the length is 1 year, 2 years incase of long-term job contracts). After 5 years they can apply for the PermanentResidency Card (guaranteeing indefinite leave to remain), which is, however,bound to economic, integration (language test), and evidence of housing. Massregularizations have traditionally provided the way TCNs obtain their first workstay permit in Italy, even though annual quota decrees also provide a limitedamount of work entry visas, for selected nationalities and work positions (seasonaland long-term, dependent and self-employed, domestic and skilled workers).Domestic and care work for families have traditionally received preferential treat-ment, both in amnesties and in quota decrees (Van Hooren 2010).

8. We can distinguish, in this respect, the rules governing the entrance, mobi-lity and the rights afforded to naturalized citizens, European citizens, workers(skilled/unskilled, seasonal/long-term, domestic and care workers), asylumseekers and family members, as well as those who have of indefinite leave to remainand to undocumented people.

9. Central, in this respect, are also the rules governing the transition from onestatus to another (such as regularization procedures, naturalization policies and thelike).

10. A relevant exception has been, for instance, the recent case of the “babycard” (a means-tested reimbursement of the expenses for milk and diapers forfamilies with children under three months) which was reserved to Italian families(art. 19, law n82/2009).

11. The latter two categories were included in 2007 (Messaggio INPS n8 12712,21/05/2007).

12. The latter were included in 2001 (art. 74 dlgs. 151/2001).13. Circolare INPS n. 9, 22/01/2010.14. Circolare n. 4, 1 febbraio 2012.15. European citizens’ family reunification can be seen as an extension of their

mobility rights: since EU citizens are allowed to enter, work and travel back andforth, so are their family members. If working, they are not expected to show anyeconomic proof to register with the Municipality and get full residence status.Among TCNs, only the holders of a one-year (or longer) residence permit canapply for family reunification (undocumented and seasonal workers are thereforeexcluded from this right). They must prove they are living in a home large enough

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to accommodate a certain number of people holding a regular contract and thatthey earn enough money, the amount contingent on how many relatives they wishto bring.

16. EU family members are specified as the spouse; children under age 21 orolder if still economically dependent on the European citizen; and economicallydependent parents. Parents and children of the TCN’s spouse are also acceptedunder the same conditions. The law strictly specifies who the rejoinable relativesare: the spouse, minor children, contingent to the other natural parent’s permis-sion, adult children with a proven disability who are unable to sustain themselvesand elderly parents under restrictive conditions.

17. According to the law, dependent parents could be reunited only if they donot have any other children in their country of origin; parents over 65 can bereunited only if their other children cannot take care of them for serious and prov-able health problems (see Melting Pot “Family reunions: what changes with theBossi-Fini Law” http://www.meltingpot.org/articolo35.html).

18. Female-headed households with underage children in Milan are 15.4percent among Latin Americans and 8.2 percent among Eastern Europeans(Comune di Milano 2011).

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