50 research outputs found
Migration and parenting: reviewing the debate and calling for future research
Purpose - The term "parenting" has come to assume a specific sociological meaning: it defines parents' role and agency not only with regard to their children, but also to the state, medical doctors, psychologists and educators. How normative stances toward parenting affect the lives of parents has started to be analyzed in the social sciences, however less is known about how the "culture of parenting" impacts on the way migrant families take care of their children. The purpose of this paper is to untangle the conceptual and disciplinary roots of parenting studies stemming from early anthropological studies of kinship and ethno-psychological theories, through to the anthropology of childhood and child rearing and the current socio-anthropological studies of parenting. This review offers conceptual tools for the creation of a critical perspective on migration and parenting. Design/methodology/approach - The paper acknowledges the theoretical and empirical gap in the study of migration and parenting by illustrating the sparse and interdisciplinary literature which has dealt with migration and parenting. Findings - The paper discusses the presented literature's limits and potentialities in light of the new culture of parenting. Originality/value - The paper addresses future paths for ethnographic work
Hope emplaced. What happens to hope after arrival: The case of Ecuadorian families living in Italy
Allergy narratives in Italy: 'naturalness' in the social construction of medical pluralism
Based on an ethnographic study conducted in both biomedical and CAM settings in north Italy, I explore how people and practitioners make sense of allergy and how patients utilize plural healing options. Despite a wide range of medical modalities, people categorize and use medicine according to whether they are ânaturalâ or ânot-naturalâ, thus dissolving any potential confusion between diverse therapies. I analyse how the concept of naturalness relates to allergy and medical pluralism. Nature is perceived as opposed to pollution, the first associated with a reassuring and idealized past and the latter to a modernity riddled with uncertainties. Participants associated a diverse set of meanings with nature, permitting them the syncretism of different medical modalities. Medical pluralism in the study area is an uneven platform for discussion and experimentation, the outcome of historical and cultural context and local entanglements of power
Negotiating Care in Uncertain Settings and Looking Beneath the Surface of Health Governance Projects
âItâs Complicated, isnât it? Citizenship and Ethnic Identity in a Mobile Worldâ
This article explores the experiences of second-generation migrants with a focus on Chinese in Prato (Italy), for whom the relationship between citizenship and identity is tightly linked. Most studies maintain that the link between citizenship and identity is instrumentalist or ambiguous. In contrast, we focus on the affective dimension of citizenship and identity. We argue that citizenship status functions as a key defining concept of identity in Italy, in contrast to countries like Australia, where the notion of ethnicity is more commonly evoked. Several factors have contributed to this situation: the strong essentialist conception of ius sanguinis in Italian citizenship law, the recent history of Italian immigration, the European politics of exclusion and the repudiation of the concept of ethnicity in Italian scholarship as well as popular and political discourse. We conclude that the emphasis on formal citizenship, and the relative absence of alternative identity concepts like ethnicity, limits the possibilities for expressions of mixity and hyphenated identities in contemporary Italian society