Soviet Signoras : Personal and Collective Transformations in Eastern European Migration / Martina Cvajner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cvajner, Martina, Author.

Series:

Fieldwork encounters and discoveries.

Chicago scholarship online.

Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women immigrants--Italy--Social conditions.

Women immigrants.

Women foreign workers--Italy.

Women foreign workers.

Assimilation (Sociology)--Italy.

Assimilation (Sociology).

Italy--Emigration and immigration.

Italy.

Former Soviet republics--Emigration and immigration.

Former Soviet republics.

Europe, Eastern--Emigration and immigration.

Europe, Eastern.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (276 pages).

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Across the Western world, the air is filled with talk of immigration. The changes brought by immigration have triggered a renewed fervor for isolationism able to shutter political traditions and party systems. So often absent from these conversations on migration are however the actual stories and experiences of the migrants themselves. In fact, migration does not simply transport people. It also changes them deeply. Enter Martina Cvajner's Soviet Signoras, a far-reaching ethnographic study of two decades in the lives of women who migrated to northern Italy from several former Soviet republics. Cvajner details the personal and collective changes brought about by the experience of migration for these women: from the first hours arriving in a new country with no friends, relatives, or existing support networks, to later remaking themselves for their new environment. In response to their traumatic displacement, the women of Soviet Signoras-nearly all of whom found work in their new Western homes as elder care givers-refashioned themselves in highly sexualized, materialistic, and intentionally conspicuous ways. Cvajner's focus on overt sexuality and materialism is far from sensationalist, though. By zeroing in on these elements of personal identity, she reveals previously unexplored sides of the social psychology of migration, coloring our contemporary discussion with complex shades of humanity.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Prologue

Introduction

1. A Room of One's Own: Managing Spaces, Lives, and Laws in Residential Care Work

2. Practicing Abundance: Immigrant Women and the Challenge of Consumption

3. Strong Mothers, Great Lovers: Sexuality in Emigration

4. Getting Serious: Courtship, Love, and (Maybe) Marriage in Emigration

5. Proper, Respectable Places: The Arduous Construction of Community Institutions

Conclusion: From the Detritus of the Soviet Union into a New Social World

Acknowledgments

Appendix: How I Conducted My Study

Notes

References

Index of Participant Pseudonyms

Index of Subjects

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Feb 2020)

ISBN:

9780226662428

022666242X

OCLC:

1120693520