Papers by Selenia Marabello
Pacini Editore eBooks, 2018
L'articolo, basato su tre ricerche etnografiche in contesto ospedaliero, analizza le rapprese... more L'articolo, basato su tre ricerche etnografiche in contesto ospedaliero, analizza le rappresentazioni della maternit\ue0 e dei protocolli di cura e trattamento dell'HIV. In particolare propone un'analisi antropologica della costruzione della maternit\ue0 per donne sieropositive ad infezione HIV focalizzando l' attenzione sugli slittamenti di significato delle pratiche e procedure di cura, cos\uec come sul significato della riproduzione biologica mancata e/o possibile. Infine, sulla base dei dati etnografici, propone alcune riflessioni sulle forme di rappresentazione del tempo di gravidanza e costruzione della parentela in cui il dato biologico non coincide con quello sociale
L'articolo tratta l'evoluzione del concetto di diaspora nelle scienze sociali e in partic... more L'articolo tratta l'evoluzione del concetto di diaspora nelle scienze sociali e in particolare in Antropologia Culturale integrando l'analisi storica con esemplificazioni etnografiche sulla diaspora africana nei diversi periodi storici. Da ultimo riflette sulla nuova connotazione terminologica in cui Diaspora emerge come categoria di definizione dei migranti impegnati nella cooperazione allo sviluppo
CIS- Dipartimento di Filosofia e Comunicazione, 2016
This article investigates the research settings, conditions and opportunities offered by an appli... more This article investigates the research settings, conditions and opportunities offered by an applied research on gender violence conducted in Sicily (2004) by a group of associated independent researchers called DAERA. The research obstacles and results are outlined to shed light on the potentialities, negotiations and legitimacy of anthropological analysis in contributing to policy-oriented investigations and informing public debate. At the same time, I describe the hierarchies of knowledge and social dynamics that influence the research process, in this case visible in negotiations over ethnography as a research tool, the validity of anthropological arguments and the final report write-up. Suggesting that domestic violence might be illuminated by anthropological insights on violence, social suffering, subjectivity and gendered power relations, this paper discusses how theory and engagement might be intertwined and expressed. I conclude by arguing that, even when it is related to a professional job, applied anthropology requires methodological rigour, the ability to combine multiple research tools, an ethical and socio-political awareness and a strong commitment to and command of anthropological conceptualisations and theories
Guaraldi eBooks, 2011
Nowadays the Migration and Development relation is becoming a kind of \u201cmantra\u201d (Faist 2... more Nowadays the Migration and Development relation is becoming a kind of \u201cmantra\u201d (Faist 2008) a real \u201cdiscourse of development\u201d (Grillo, Stirrat 1997) connected, as it is, with other discourses stressing community, civil society, self reliance, and, sometimes problematically, profitable investment. However, from the perspective of African hometown associations, especially those developed in France, such a connection displays a longer story. Already at the beginning of the 80\u2019s Malian and Senegalese organisations embarked on micro-development projects aimed at their country of origin in sub-Saharan Africa (Daum 1998). Codevelopment projects, it was argued, should be \u2018decentralised\u2019, their primary movers, and the locus of their activities, are not states, but localities: local states and places, the people who inhabit them, and the institutions of civil society (NGOs, associations etc) they have created. Codevelopment circles also stress the importance of dialogue with migrants and their organisations. Their legitimate interests in the development process, it is argued, should be recognised and they should be encouraged to become \u2018development actors\u2019, dissolving the developer/developed distinction (Lavigne-Delville, 1991: 196; Quiminal 1991). What distinguishes codeveloppement from the transnational activities of migrant hometown associations is the involvement of a variety of local institutions and actors \u2018here\u2019 (regional and municipal authorities, NGOs, and associations, based locally in Europe but representing particular villages or clusters of villages where migrants originate, with funding from the state, or the EU), and counterparts (local authorities, NGOs, village associations etc) \u2018there\u2019, in the South. These activities may represent an original strategy signalling a refusal to break with countries of origin while seeking integration. However, Do these reflect the real demands of migrants or the logic of European planners, politicians, and social practitioners involved in the implementation of migration policies? This is an aspect that applied as much as academic research should always explore, moved from a healthy skepticism (Grillo, Riccio 2004). However, although one should be cautious towards a celebratory as much as pessimistic views towards co-development, a methodological opportunity needs to be recognized: by involving so many social actors, this field of research represents a laboratory for the study of such a complex and ambivalent social process, as is transnational migration. Ideally the student of migration should be working simultaneously on three fronts: with the institutions of the receiving society, among migrants themselves, and in the sending society (Grillo 1985). Therefore, it is important to combine a transnational approach with the need to bridge a divide in the studies of migration, which have tended to consider either the characteristics of an immigrant community or the characteristics of the society incorporating it. With this aim, the study of migrants\u2019 translocal codevelopment projects represents a methodological solution to study social change (De Sardan 1995) by focussing on the interaction between the institutions of the receiving contexts, migrants\u2019 transnational practices and the economic and socio-cultural transformations of the sending context (Riccio 2007)
Ombre Corte eBooks, 2010
Il contributo, fondato su una ricerca empirica, analizza come un gruppo di migranti ghanesi coinv... more Il contributo, fondato su una ricerca empirica, analizza come un gruppo di migranti ghanesi coinvolti in un progetto di cosviluppo rielabori la nozione di empowerment delle donne trovando forme di accomodazione dell'idea di famiglia tra contesto di provenienza (Ghana) e contesto di migrazione (Italia)
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2017
Many migrants nowadays feed various forms of transnational engagement with their countries of ori... more Many migrants nowadays feed various forms of transnational engagement with their countries of origin. Focusing on the increasingly important dimension of transnational entrepreneurial spaces, in this paper we present and analyze transnational social entrepreneurship as one particular instance of diasporas’ transnational engagement for homeland development. Drawing on a theory of practice approach, we analyze the 18-months ethnography about a diaspora- owned social enterprise acting between Italy and Ghana, to provide an exploration of how diasporas engage in transnational social entrepreneurship to act as development brokers. We model the process through which diasporas build their collective identities, implement brokering practices, and acquire legitimacy and power. This paper contributes to transnational and social entrepreneurship, and provides policy-making recommendations.
Nella tesi sono rielaborati i dati etnografici, prodotti in Italia ed in Ghana, con una ricerca s... more Nella tesi sono rielaborati i dati etnografici, prodotti in Italia ed in Ghana, con una ricerca sul campo di oltre un anno. Attraverso la ricostruzione di un progetto di co-sviluppo che mobilita i migranti in quanto attori di sviluppo, ed in questo caso l’associazione ghanese di Modena per avviare alcune iniziative di sviluppo economico, umano e sostenibile nel paese d’origine, si sono indagate le forme concrete di transnazionalismo attivate da questo gruppo sociale. Nell’analisi, prettamente antropologica, si rivela come, nel progetto di co-sviluppo osservato, le identita etniche, le relazioni asimmetriche di genere ed i processi di negoziazione politica sono celati ed agiti dai diversi attori sociali coinvolti. Si sono inoltre osservate le forme di partecipazione politica in Italia ed in Ghana rivelando come il collettivo ghanese abbia avviato un processo di depoliticizzazione dello sviluppo nel contesto d’origine e, nonostante cio, sia divenuto nel paese d’immigrazione un nuovo a...
Journal of International Development
<div> <p>This paper discusses reception practices for unaccompanied minors in Italy b... more <div> <p>This paper discusses reception practices for unaccompanied minors in Italy by juxtaposing legislative changes, ideas about and social representations of the condition of minors, contingent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and the refugee crisis along the Euro-Mediterranean border. This crisis is particularly key for interpreting migratory processes involving unaccompanied foreign minors because it has framed migrant minors in a morally ambivalent and polysemous way. Of the many formulas and practices involved in minor migrant reception, the analysis focuses on a shared housing project in Bologna called Vesta in which young migrants about to reach the age of majority, a moment that marks a sudden change in their lives, are temporarily placed in Italian citizens' and families' homes. Through an anthropological lens, we examine how welfare policies involving citizens and spaces of social relations and cohabitation create commonly overlooked spaces in which intersecting individual and collective claims condition the pathways of young migrants, steering them in the arrival society, and give rise to diverse ideas and imaginaries about family ties.</p> </div>
Human Organization, 2020
Italy has been the European country first struck and most heavily affected by COVID-19. Exploring... more Italy has been the European country first struck and most heavily affected by COVID-19. Exploring the outbreak’s impact on the migration reception system in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna region, we show how anthropological tools have been applied to mitigate public health misunderstandings and the effects of legislative measures among vulnerable mothers, asylum seekers, and refugees. Following a description of the legal horizon and migrant reception systems, we explore the gaps in representations of COVID-19 containment measures. By observing the underlying structures of social inequality and the relationship between individual/social/political bodies, this essay offers an ethnographically grounded analysis. It investigates how the outbreak has been experienced and represented by vulnerable migrants—diseased adult men, sex trafficked, and mothers migrants—living in reception structures. Although their experiences differ with gender, age, and material conditions, they all show what is at s...
DADA Rivista di Antropologia post-globale, 2014
The relationship between migration and development, mainly connotated in favourable terms, propos... more The relationship between migration and development, mainly connotated in favourable terms, proposes with urgency migrants as development agents. They are defined as the new diasporas. Exploring a co-development project financed by the MIDA Ghana-Senegal Programme involving Ghanaian migrants in Modena (Italy), a retrospective analysis focuses on the research setting conditions and opportunities. As an anthropologist, the researcher was first involved as a consultant for the evaluation project implementation and subsequently continued the analysis within academic institutions. With the aim to illustrate the potentialities for applied anthropology, the author will look at the discrepancies and the circular nature of the ethnographic data production and elaboration within the two fieldwork experiences.
In exploring a project named Vesta, which aims at giving a temporary 'home' to the unaccompanied ... more In exploring a project named Vesta, which aims at giving a temporary 'home' to the unaccompanied minors migrants involving committed Italian families, we shed light on the ideas and representations of 'living together' by autochthonous and migrants. Yet, considering the current pandemic measures of containment-social distancing and isolation at home-we analysed how the lockdown challenged the cohabitation among young migrants and their recipient's families. Observing domestic spaces and family ideas we investigated how the lockdown and sickness representations contributed to mould and re-elaborate symbolic and social meanings given to 'the living together'.
Antropologia Pubblica, 2020
In exploring a project named Vesta, which aims at giving a temporary 'home' to the unacco... more In exploring a project named Vesta, which aims at giving a temporary 'home' to the unaccompanied minors migrants involving committed Italian families, we shed light on the ideas and representations of 'living together' by autochthonous and migrants. Yet, considering the current pandemic measures of containment-social distancing and isolation at home-we analysed how the lockdown challenged the cohabitation among young migrants and their recipient's families. Observing domestic spaces and family ideas we investigated how the lockdown and sickness representations contributed to mould and re-elaborate symbolic and social meanings given to 'the living together'.
In the contemporary Italian scenario characterized by increasingly strict visa and asylum policie... more In the contemporary Italian scenario characterized by increasingly strict visa and asylum policies and a proliferation of “borders regimes”, however, mothers with 0-3-year-old children are still considered a vulnerable group. How does the categorization of vulnerable groups – targeted and reframed by policies, public discourses and institutional norms – allow social scientists to observe the production of subjectivity? How are time, space and mobility tactics lived and represented by migrant mothers of very young children born during the migratory journey? In this paper focusing on the biographies of women I have defined as forced mothers I will explore daily tactics, social networks, and personal aspirations to show how mobility processes entail multiple –institutional and biographical, temporalities.
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Papers by Selenia Marabello