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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1076

Part of General Poster Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Casa dolce casa: a narrative analysis of the stories told by foreign female care workers, living and working in Bologna, Italy.

Authors: Blundell, Catherine Jane
Submitted by: Blundell, Catherine Jane (University of Southampton, Italy)

As the proportion of elderly people in Western societies continues to rise, so does the need for their care. In Italy, where this task has traditionally been carried out by family members, recent social changes have meant that a large part of this care is now being undertaken by female foreign live-in carers or badanti. The badanti often arrive in Italy with very little, if any, prior knowledge of Italian or Italians and learn about both through their work. By analysing life narratives of the women undertaking this work, this project seeks to reveal how identities are managed and negotiated in this intimate and complicated relationship.

Although there has been much interest in the badanti phenomenon in recent years, most studies undertaken have concentrated on economic or sociological aspects. In this project, I am particularly interested in the experiences of the women themselves and how they make sense of them. To this end I adopt an ethnographic approach to the linguistic analysis of narrative discourse by interviewing carers in their home environments, where caring takes place, whenever possible.  Close study of the ways in which the carers recount key life events reveals common themes in the content of the narratives, which connect what are, in fact, richly individual and personal stories. In particular, I am interested in examining the narrative strategies that the carers use to recreate a “home from home” in a new country and the construction of “belonging” in a phase of their lives which may last from just a few months to indefinitely. Another key theme to emerge from  the material, is that of family and “fictive kin” (Karner, 1998; Hoff, Feldman & Vidovicova, 2010) and the strategies employed in negotiating the identity of surrogate-daughter to the elderly person being looked after in Italy. At the same time, transnational care-giving is evident in their relationship with their own family members, especially in the construction and maintenance of identity of motherhood-from-a-distance (of children left behind) (Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997; Zontini, 2010). This poster presentation will document the progress of this project, which is still underway, as well as outlining some of the initial findings.

References

Hoff, A., Feldman, S., & Vidovicova, L. (2010). Migrant home care workers caring for older people: fictive kin, substitute, and complementary family caregivers in an ethnically diverse environment. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 5(2), 7-16.

Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., & Avila, E. (1997). “I’m here but I'm there”: The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood. Gender & Society, 11(5), 548-571.

Karner, T. X. (1998). Professional caring: Homecare workers as fictive kin. Journal of Aging Studies, 12(1), 69-82.

Zontini, E. (2010). Transnational Families, Migration and Gender: Moroccan and Filipino Women in Bologna and Barcelona. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.