Frauen in der Migrationsbewegungen: Ihre Spiegelfunktion in den sozio-oekonomischen und multikulturellen Wandlungsprozessen

Through migrations it is possible to understand the most important social changes of our times which are characterised by globalization processes. Migrations have not only taken the characteristics of a worldwide phenomena, but they also reflect the dimensions which characterize the global processes – the economic, cultural and political dimensions. First of all, in fact, migrations are connected with economical transformations, that is with the expansive strategies of the market economies, as well as with the transformations occurring both within industrialized and less industrialized countries. Secondly, they reflect in a symbolical way one of the questions which arise from the socio-cultural changing processes within globalisation, namely the possibility of living together among different cultures. Moreover migrants make particularly visible the unsoundness of the myth on which our societies have been founded for a long time, namely the idea of an overlap between nation, state, ethnic belonging and individual identity. Therefore migrations have the function of a "mirror" when referring to structural as well as subjective changes. The article aims at focalizing this function of migrations within the processes of social transformation of our times, with a particular attention to the female component and to the socio-economical dimension, without however putting aside the cultural dimension. The female component allows in a symbolical way to observe the passage from a fordist model of production and labour to the post-fordism, where the need of labour in the tertiary sector is growing and more flexible. Furthermore, the work of migrant women makes visible the transformation going on within the welfare states, crossed by deep changes and strong reorganisations which increase the presence of migrant workers (or better said of female workers) within the jobs connected with the granting of services to the person. Finally, female migrations are useful in reading problems and challenges connected with the multicultural question, as migrant women are often placed on the threshold of those processes imposed by human mobility in the direction of a change of mind about one's own cultural references, social roles and behaviour, identity and more generally one's own culture.