Daughters of migration: An autoethnographic journey through a matrilineal history of migration between Brazil and Italy

Abstract

This project starts out as an inquiry of my experience as a migrant in Italy, where I partially grew up. But this only occurred because the women in my family decided to move away from Brazil. Thus, I needed to include their voices and travel through the history of my matrilineage from Brazil to Italy to understand the complexities of gender and migration and give an account on the experience of being a female in the migratory process. The women in my family are part of a migratory flux of women who migrate from peripheral countries in Latin America to work in the domestic and care work sectors in Europe. In this sense, I investigate how the globalization of labour affected us and contributed to shaping the migratory process. Moving to Italy is also related to a previous colonial bond of past Italian mass emigration to Brazil at the end of 19th century, which granted us the access to the Italian citizenship. This is a further theme that I discuss so as to understand how issues of citizenship shape people’s movement. In this way, I first discuss what I consider three broader aspects of international migration: class mobility, family separation and citizenship. Subsequently I move towards a more subjective dimension to present what are the peculiarities of changing one’s country of origin according to our generations and the subjective elements embedded in each experience. I am interested in understanding and giving an impression of how we perceived the migratory process similarly and differently, and how our identities were affected by it. Finally, this thesis contributes to enhancing the understanding of female migration while giving a nuanced account of the embodied experience. Likewise I converse with postcolonial and decolonial theories in order to articulate an analysis of migration that is deeply concerned with the discourses on migrant subjectivities.