From Kerala to Rome: why women migrate

Migration to the West offers women from poorer countries opportunities for increased financial and social independence. Recent research looks at how one group of women migrants balance their new status with the expectations placed on them by their families and communities.

The paper, from the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, explores how migration from the Malayali community, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, to Italy is influenced by the women’s desire to live more independent lives. It shows how these women have played an active and pioneering role in developing networks which sustain and promote migration.

Though Malayalis have a long history of working abroad, significant migration to the Italian capital, Rome, and the surrounding region only took off in the late 1980s. The Malayali women in Italy are often the first members of their family to migrate. It is unusual in South Asian communities for single women to migrate, but many of the Malayali women, mainly Catholics of lower middle class origin, were able to use visas obtained through religious institutions to come to Italy. Although encouraged by Italian missionaries and church authorities in Kerala to pursue a religious vocation, few Malayali women in Rome have subsequently become nuns. In recent years only nuns who have already received their training in India have been permitted to enter Italy.

A quarter of the Malayali women in Rome are employed as nurses but the majority work as maids or do other unskilled jobs in the services sector. Many have used family reunification procedures to bring siblings to Italy.

Interviews with Malayali women in Rome show:

• The primary importance of kinship in their lives; few of the women have any links with the institution which represents Malayali workers in Italy, for instance.
• Many abandon education in Kerala to take up degrading employment in Italy which allows them to contribute to their family’s income, accumulate money for themselves and their sisters’ dowries and to obtain a degree of independence unachievable in their villages in India.
• They rarely describe their experience as forced; instead they emphasise the restrictive family expectations on them and the lack of opportunities in Kerala.
• Marriage to Italian men is common; this is a result of their decision not to go back to Kerala and a means of detaching themselves from family pressures and expectations.
• Journeys back to Kerala are often occasions to meet relatives who wish to come to Italy, to arrange documents and money for other migrants or to help arrange marriages or other family rituals.

The paper’s conclusions suggest that:

• There is a relationship between a woman’s decision to migrate and her role and status within her family and community.
• The decision to allow a daughter to leave involves a compromise between improving the family’s financial situation, and preserving the girl’s, and the family’s, honour.
• It is naïve to depict migration in terms of a clash between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ life styles.
• Migration can enable women to build solidarity networks and become increasingly and actively involved in their family’s economic and social improvement.

Source(s):
‘Unorthodox sisters: gender relations and transnational marriages among Malayali migrants in Italy’ by Ester Gallo, Sussex Migration Working Paper 17, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, August 2003 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 6 January 2004

Further Information:
Ester Gallo
Università di Siena
Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia
Dipartimento di Studi Demo-Etno-Antropologici
(C19)
Via Roma 47
53100 Siena
Italy

Tel: 39 0577.232512
Fax: 39 0577.232503
Contact the contributor: antropester@yahoo.co.in

Universita di Siena

Sussex Centre for Migration Research
School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9SJ
UK

Sussex Centre for Migration Research

Other related links:
Gender, Migration, and Citizenship Resources Project