FemEcoMig · Uneven lives: female economy, migration patterns and citizenship in Early Modern Italy

Uneven lives: female economy, migration patterns and citizenship in Early Modern Italy

FemEcoMig studies the connections between migration, female work, female property and social networks in Early Modern and Modern Italy. It focuses on domestic and international migration and on migrant women (and their families) who moved to and into the state of Piedmont-Savoy during the period 1650-1860. In the first section, FemEcoMig investigates the role played by work, property and social networks of migrant women. It intersects migration and female work, property and social relations with gender, age, marital status, social position, age, education. The FemEcoMig project reassess the importance of women by analyzing how female material resources and relationships allow women and the members of their families to achieve settlement patterns and to gain access to urban resources. The research inquires into women's paid and unpaid work. Secondly it highlights how migrant women were able to use their property (dowry, personal incomes or inherited goods) and what became of their assets in the natal community. Thirdly, the research deals with the nature and the extent of female social networks - family and kinship ties, community ties, networks of peers etc.. - and their strategic use for settlement and access to urban resources (guilds/labour market; welfare system). Finally, the role of female work, assets, social networks and kinship ties is considered in the larger context of the household perspective (participation in the business family, overlapping of professional and kinship ties etc…). The second section of FemEcoMig focuses on women and men applying for naturalization and citizenship and asks what were the reasons for their application. The contents of the grant are examined, as well as the practices and the concrete conditions in which citizenship and/or naturalization were enacted by foreigners. Pioneer studies which paid attention to the connections among women, guilds and citizenship, rarely carried on in-depth analysis of links between the previous, migration and settlement practices, economic activities and family strategies. FemEcoMig therefore deals with citizenship and naturalization and trough the reconstruction of biographies it shows how in the past the access to civic rights was linked to the possibility for women and men to act as social and economic actors. The FemEcoMig project improves our understanding of contemporary phenomena of migration. It shows the economic and social role of migrant women in independent migration as well as in family migration, through their work, property and social ties.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union