Abstract
This chapter analyzes the family reunification process of Bangladeshi migrant men in Italy. It illustrates how men’s identity models and masculinity patterns are being challenged and are undergoing changes. Men’s perspectives are the focus for an analysis of the changes happening in family relationships set in the migratory and reunification context.
Using data collected through deep narrative interviews and participant observation, I analyze the social (re)definition of masculinity; how Bangladeshi migrants reuniting their family in Italy are (re)producing practices and identities; what kind of mutations happen in men’s authority, forms of “protection” and their “sense of honour” in order to protect/control family members and to satisfy their needs.
During migration, which is usually accompanied by family reunification, migrants live through processes of constant rearrangement of family normative relationships between genders and generations (Suarez Orozco Carola et al. Family process, 4(41), 625–643, 2002); Parreñas, R.S. (2005). Children of global migration. Transnational families and gendered woes. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press; Yeoh et al. (Global Networks, 5(4), 307–315, 2005). These processes affect the self-perception, the way of being and feeling in the new family and social context. New family practices, decisions and expectations also modify gender identities and the manner in which migrant men renegotiate their identification with hegemonic masculinity (Connell, R.W. (1995). Masculinities. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.).
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Notes
- 1.
The term derives from the translation of the Italian word “negri” (corresponding to its English homologue “niggers”) which is the pejorative synonym of the less offensive word “neri” (blacks). I think that the protagonist of my ethnographic diary chose the term unconsciously, as a consequence of the assonance between the two words “negro” and “nero” in the Italian language. I do not think it is a result of an internalization of the dominant racist doxa. Even if the used language and the adoption of this racist term surely reveal linguistic habitus which the subjects incorporated following the daily absorption of such signifiers.
- 2.
Usually a marriage arranged by their families and then celebrated during holidays in their own homeland (Erricchiello 2009).
- 3.
Citizenship in Italy, the European country most reluctant to granting the citizenship, is given after 10 years of regular and continuous stay on national territory. This citizenship is transferred to the sons and to the spouse. (Codini, in Morozzo della Rocca, 2008)
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Puppa, F.D. (2014). Men’s Experiences and Masculinity Transformations. In: Tsolidis, G. (eds) Migration, Diaspora and Identity. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7211-3_11
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