Migrant women. Voices and looks

Résumé

Based on ‘conversational’ interviews, this paper reflects on the experiences and
hopes of migrant women: North African and Eastern European. The interviews
describe their feelings of loneliness when they first arrive, their diffidence towards
Italian women, the opportunities for contact offered by factory work, their
nostalgia for their country of origin and, in the case of women from Eastern Europe,
for the children they have left at home. The intention to remain in their new
homeland differs the first group from the second who prefer the prospect of return.