Francesca Scrinzi | University of Glasgow (original) (raw)

Papers by Francesca Scrinzi

Migratory Men. Place, Transnationalism and Masculinities, edited by Garth Stahl and Yang Zhao London, Routledge, 2023

Drawing on qualitative data, this chapter explores native male employers of migrant men who provi... more Drawing on qualitative data, this chapter explores native male employers of migrant men who provide paid and home-based care and cleaning services in Italy. Specifically, we focus on Italian men from different class backgrounds and we explore how they assert hegemonic masculinity by acting as 'managers of care' with respect to 'foreign' workers. The analysis threads together emerging studies of migrant men and masculinities-as well as of masculinities and globalization-with the growing scholarship on migrant reproductive labour. We show how male employers' involvement in reproductive labour is relational, performative and enacted in reference to everyday household responsibilities. We highlight the importance of considering the home as a site of encounter between Italian male employers and transnational migrant workers where the reproduction of hegemonic masculinities occurs. The production of hierarchies of transnational masculinities within 'globalised homes' is not only forged upon class and ethnicity but is also influenced by the typology of the domestic chore outsourced and the employers' individual life-cycle. We argue that, based on specific positionalities, native men forge their masculinities through practices and discourses of domestic bounding or unbounding, engaging with migrant male workers or else keeping them at a distance.

"Italy", in: Richard McNeil-Willson and Anna Triandafyllidou (eds) Handbook of Violent Extremism and Resilience, 2023

A country characterised by a bloody history of left-wing and right-wing terrorism in the 1970s an... more A country characterised by a bloody history of left-wing and right-wing terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s, today Italy stands out among other European countries because of the limited incidence of violent extremism. However, the notion of an Italian 'exceptionalism' has been challenged. So far, the national and linguistic diversity of the Muslim population, a still-limited Muslim second generation, and the absence of urban 'ghettos' afflicted by...

Richard McNeil-Willson and Anna Triandafyllidou (eds), Handbook of Violent Extremism and Resilience, Londra, Routledge, 2023

In the past five years, France has become one of the main targets of jihadist violence and is the... more In the past five years, France has become one of the main targets of jihadist violence and is the largest producer of foreign fighters in Europe. The country has also seen a surge of anti-Semitic incidents; indebted to the historical experience of the French New Right, extreme right movements are very active and have recently been bolstered in the context of the 'antigender' mobilisations. The country is marked by an important colonial history and...

International Review of Sociology Blog, 2021

OpenDemocracy, 2022

An increasing number of European women are viewing radical-Right parties as representing their in... more An increasing number of European women are viewing radical-Right parties as representing their interests, despite their anti-feminist agendas

Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa n.3, 2021, pp. 387-410, with E. Gallo, 2021

Gender, Place and Culture , 2019

This article explores the construction of migrant masculinities in the context of reproductive la... more This article explores the construction of migrant masculinities in the context of reproductive labour. It focuses on Asian Christian men working as porters in upper middle-class residential buildings in Rome (Italy). This masculinised niche of reproductive labour combines differently gendered chores: feminised tasks (cleaning and caring), which are mainly performed in the most private spaces of the home, and masculinised tasks (maintenance and security), carried out in the public or semi-public spaces of the buildings. The analysis addresses the dearth of studies on the sex-typing of jobs in the context of migrant men’s work experiences. It also contributes to ongoing debates on the geography of reproductive labour and on masculinities and place, by exploring how practices of migrant reproductive labour construct private and public places. The construction of masculinities and place is shaped by the gendered racialisation of migrant men at the wider societal level, which materialises in the construction of ‘dangerous’ and ‘respectable’ urban areas. The article suggests that widespread concerns over religious difference and public security play a key role in defining migrant men’s access to the workplace and in shaping work relations.

This project was funded by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship of the European Commission, Europe... more This project was funded by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship of the European Commission, European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies/Global Governance Programme, project n. 652925 (2015-2018).

Libération, 2018

F. Scrinzi, 2018, interview dans Libération, 16 Décembre, « Les emplois domestiques trouvent leur... more F. Scrinzi, 2018, interview dans Libération, 16 Décembre, « Les emplois domestiques trouvent leurs racines dans le travail féminin gratuit et bénévole », par Léa Mormin-Chauvac.

« Les emplois domestiques en Italie and en France », in: Évelyne Bechtold-Rognon et alii (sous la... more « Les emplois domestiques en Italie and en France », in: Évelyne Bechtold-Rognon et alii (sous la dir. de), Toutes à y gagner. Vingt ans de féminisme intersyndical, 83-89, Paris, Éditions Syllepse, 2017, 83-88.

Confronti. Mensile di Religioni, Politica, Società, 2018

Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, 2018

Based on qualitative data, this article focuses on management practices in social cooperatives op... more Based on qualitative data, this article focuses on management practices in social cooperatives operating as nonprofit providers of domiciliary care services in Italy. Their livelihood is eroded by the presence of migrant live-in caregivers, who are privately employed, inexpensive, and often irregular. This competition is not only economic but also symbolic, as it jeopardizes the managers’ attempts to define care work as a skilled job and reproduces notions of care as naturally feminine “women’s work.” The article analyses the strategies adopted by the managers to negotiate this competition and shows how these strategies challenge dominant gendered constructions of care work.

This chapter focuses on how the Italian party of the Northern League mobilizes the issue of gende... more This chapter focuses on how the Italian party of the Northern League mobilizes the issue of gender equality to legitimize its anti-immigration claims. By drawing on two qualitative studies of this populist radical right party, we shed light on the ‘double standard’ which the party applies to migrant men and women within its discourse and politics. We also show how this ‘double standard’ is negotiated by female activists. We argue that this is linked to the familistic system that the party supports. Within such a system migrant women play a key role as paid providers of social reproductive work. Combining ethnographic and documentary data, the chapter thus connects the issue of the gendered anti-immigration politics with recent debates on gendered migration and on the international division of care work.

New Formations. A journal of culture/theory/politics, 2017

This article explores the gendered dimensions of the populist radical right discourse and policy ... more This article explores the gendered dimensions of the populist radical right discourse and policy by considering the Front national in France. The article shows how the Front national has progressively moved from a 'traditional' to a 'modern traditional' approach to issues of gender, women's work, and the family. The core of the Front national policy and ideology has remained stable over time, with regard to the interconnected issues of gender and of immigration. However, there is a significant move from the celebration of women as 'mothers of the nation', prevalent in the party until the 1990s, to an emphasis on 'working mothers' in Marine Le Pen's discourse. The article also analyses the ambivalence of Marine Le Pen's party discourse on gender, as well as the discrepancies between the party discourse and its political programme. This ambivalence mirrors the internal conflicts between the leadership and the conservative Catholic faction.

This paper is funded on data collected through an ERC Starting Grant, ‘A comparative study of women’s and men’s participation in the Northern League (Italy) and the National Front (France)’, University of Glasgow, 2012-2014. It was prepared/finalised while the author was holding a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship of the European Commission, ‘Migrant Christianity. Migration, Religion and Work in Comparative Perspective: Evangelical 'ethnic churches' in Southern Europe’, European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, 2015-2018.

Religioni e Società, 2017

Questo articolo si propone di analizzare il ruolo della religione nel contesto del lavoro di cura... more Questo articolo si propone di analizzare il ruolo della religione nel contesto del lavoro di cura rivolto agli anziani, occupandosi in particolare dei lavoratori domestici migranti in Italia. In particolare, l’analisi riguarda il cattolicesimo e, in una misura limitata, il protestantesimo evangelico. Il fine è duplice. Da un lato, ci proponiamo di evidenziare il rapporto – finora poco studiato - fra religione e pratiche professionali, in particolare in una dimensione di genere. In tal senso, l’articolo offre una riflessione preliminare sui rapporti esistenti tra religione, genere e divisione internazionale del lavoro di cura. D’altro, ci interessa sviluppare un approccio maggiormente relazionale ai rapporti di genere, che non si limiti all’analisi delle pratiche femminili ma che includa le esperienze degli uomini impiegati nel lavoro di cura: a questo proposito, l’articolo analizza come gli uomini migranti usano la religione per dare un nella costruzione sociale della mascolinità nel contesto migratorio. L’analisi suggerisce come l’appartenenza cattolica/cristiana costituisca un elemento potenzialmente inclusivo per i migranti: tale aspetto interessa in particolare gli uomini, che ricorrono alla religione al fine di sottrarsi alle rappresentazioni dominanti che stigmatizzano gli uomini stranieri, particolarmente i musulmani. Allo stesso tempo, l’analisi ci porta a sostenere come la comune appartenenza religiosa tra nativi e migranti non sembri tanto aprire la strada verso forme di uguaglianza e mobilità sociale, quanto alludere a forme d’integrazione subordinata e di femminilizzazione simbolica dei lavoratori domestici.

This paper was funded by the 2015-2018, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship of the European Commission, European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Global Governance Programme, 'Migrant Christianity. Migration, Religion and Work in Comparative Perspective: Evangelical 'ethnic churches' in Southern Europe' project no. 652925.

Migration, Masculinities and Reproductive Labour, 2016

Migratory Men. Place, Transnationalism and Masculinities, edited by Garth Stahl and Yang Zhao London, Routledge, 2023

"Italy", in: Richard McNeil-Willson and Anna Triandafyllidou (eds) Handbook of Violent Extremism and Resilience, 2023

Richard McNeil-Willson and Anna Triandafyllidou (eds), Handbook of Violent Extremism and Resilience, Londra, Routledge, 2023

International Review of Sociology Blog, 2021

OpenDemocracy, 2022

Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa n.3, 2021, pp. 387-410, with E. Gallo, 2021

Gender, Place and Culture , 2019

Libération, 2018

Confronti. Mensile di Religioni, Politica, Società, 2018

Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, 2018

New Formations. A journal of culture/theory/politics, 2017

Religioni e Società, 2017

Migration, Masculinities and Reproductive Labour, 2016

Protestant Evangelical churches are expanding in the global South. In Europe too, while Christian... more Protestant Evangelical churches are expanding in the global South. In Europe too, while Christian confessions such as Catholicism and ‘mainline’ Protestant churches are losing worshippers, migration-driven Evangelical churches, especially Pentecostals, are growing. This paper investigates the role of faith and Evangelical churches in helping migrants to negotiate class demotion and integration, attain respectability and resist racialization. The paper applies a gender perspective to the study of the narratives and practices of Latin American men and women who are members of an Evangelical church in Italy. It finds that the church provides its members with gendered norms, enabling men and women to identify with valued models of feminine/masculine Christian morality and respectability. Through religious participation, migrants members may dissociate from dominant stigmatising representations of Latin American drunkards, ‘gangs’, ‘broken families’ and ‘bad mothers’ as well as from Pentecostal religious practices, which are regarded as ‘unorthodox’ in Italy. The paper also identifies generational differences in the way in which migrants make use of Evangelical religion to resist racism. Finally, the analysis points to ambivalent processes of ‘domestication’ of migrant men and of migrant women’s agency, which combine with an overall resilient gendered asymmetry in the distribution of power in the church.

Scholarship on migrant care work argued that we need to broaden our understanding of the internat... more Scholarship on migrant care work argued that we need to broaden our understanding of the international division of reproductive labour by incorporating into the analysis other agents of social reproduction besides the household such as the non-profit sector, the market and the State. In response to these debates, the article focuses on migrant labour within the bureaucratised care sector, by comparing Latin American and Eastern European women employed in social cooperatives proving home-based elderly care services in Italy. Ethnographic data are used to show how both the workers and the cooperatives’ managers negotiate racialised and gendered constructions of care work and skill. We argue that the dominant gendered and racialised perceptions of paid care as non-skilled ‘feminine’ work, which are at play in private employment, are activated in specific ways in the bureaucratised sector too. Bureaucratised care thus comes into sight as being in strong continuity with the traditional forms of care work, as far as the social construction of the job is concerned. However, it does represent a general improvement for migrant workers in so far as it allows them to achieve better living and working conditions if compared to live-in domestic service.

special issue edited by J. Falquet, J. Freedman, A. Rabaud and F. Scrinzi, Cahiers du Cedref n. 16, 2008

Paris: Editions Pétra, 2013

This book is based on a five-year ethnographic and comparative study of migrant women's and men's... more This book is based on a five-year ethnographic and comparative study of migrant women's and men's employment in the care sector in France and Italy. Care as a resource is unequally distributed in the world: on the one hand, middle-class women in affluent countries increasingly rely on migrant and racialised women to ‘buy out’ domestic and care work, in societies characterised by durable inequalities in the sexual division of labour and the restructuring of public care provision. The book addresses this international division of care work, by bringing together the restructuring of Welfare states and of the labour market, international migration and immigration policies, the changing patterns of the sexual division of work and those of women's employment in contemporary European societies. One original contribution of the book is to compare different forms of organisation of work relations, by examining the traditional household-based domestic service relationship between a private employer and an employee (in Italy) and care-givers working in non-profit associations providing home-based services (in France). Indeed, in recent years scholars have pointed to the necessity of incorporating into the analysis of the ‘international care chains’ other agents of social reproduction besides the households, such as the market, the non-profit sector, the Welfare State and immigration policies. More specifically, the book explores the interplay of social relations of gender, class and racism in training and recruitment practices, where ideas of ‘cultural difference’ and ‘femininity’ are embedded and negotiated. The cross-national comparative perspective sheds light on the different ways in which Otherness and ‘skill’ are socially constructed in two very different national context, characterised by specific care and gender regimes, migratory patterns, public policies, models of integration and forms of organisation of care work.

This paper aims to conduct a systematic and critical review of contemporary literature on process... more This paper aims to conduct a systematic and critical review of contemporary literature on processes of polarisation, the role they are perceived as playing in creating a matrix of adversities that can lead to increased vulnerability to what is often termed 'violent extremism', and the potential impact of practices that are understood as building pro-social resilience to such adversities. Through a wide-ranging review, taking in studies and practice on polarisation and 'violent extremism', the authors aim to identify a schema of what are broadly conceptualised as vulnerabilities -factors, operating on macro, meso and micro levels, which may either increase or decrease the likelihood that communities become fragmented and polarised within a European context.

To quote this report: Francesca Scrinzi, 'Gendering activism in populist radical right parties. A... more To quote this report: Francesca Scrinzi, 'Gendering activism in populist radical right parties. A comparative study of women's and men's participation in the Northern League (Italy) and the National Front (France). In-progress preliminary analysis report', funded by ERC Starting grant, March 2014, http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/research/sociology/projects/genderingactivis minpopulistradicalrightparties/publications/preliminary%20report/ Although considerable scholarship has focused on the populist radical right 1 (PRR) parties in Europe 2 , very little is known about their gendered dimension. Yet gender emerges as an important indicator of the ideological profile of the European PRR 3 . Women constitute a minority of the voters, activists and politicians of these parties, which are characterised by an overtly sexist rhetoric championing traditional models of femininity and the 'natural family' as the fundamental base of the social order. Gender also plays a key role in the symbolic organisation of these parties: the defining characteristic of the radical right is its reliance on essentialist constructions of the Other to forge and reproduce hierarchical differences, variously based on gender, sexuality, culture, class or religion (Bacchetta and Power 2002). The need for gendering our understanding of the populist radical right in Europe 1 According to Cas Mudde (2007), these are defined by their nativist, populist and authoritarian ideology. However there is no consensus among scholars on the definition of this family of parties and several different categories are used (PRR, far right, radical right, right-wing extremism, etc.).

“Uno studio comparativo della partecipazione politica delle donne e degli uomini nella Lega Nord ... more “Uno studio comparativo della partecipazione politica delle donne e degli uomini nella Lega Nord (Italia) e nel Fronte Nazionale (Francia)”, rapporto di ricerca preliminare, finanziato da Consiglio Europea della Ricerca, Starting grant, Marzo 2014,

“Militantisme des femmes dans les partis de la droite populiste radicale. Une étude comparative d... more “Militantisme des femmes dans les partis de la droite populiste radicale. Une
étude comparative de la participation des femmes et des hommes au sein de la Ligue du Nord
(Italie) et du Front national (France)”, rapport de recherche préliminaire, étude financée par le
Conseil Européen de la Recherche(2012-2014), Starting grant, Mars 2014,
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/research/sociology/projects/genderingactivisminpopuli
stradicalrightparties/publications/preliminary%20report/

This article aims at gendering our understanding of populist radical right ideology, policy and a... more This article aims at gendering our understanding of populist radical right ideology, policy and activism in Italy. It does so by focusing on migrant care labour, which provides a strategic site for addressing the relationship between anti-immigration politics and the gendered and racialised division of work. Three arrangements and understandings of elderly care are analysed, whereby care work should be performed 'in the family and in the nation', 'in the family/outside the nation' and 'in the nation/outside the family'. Party documents and interviews with women activists are used to show how the activists' views and experiences partly diverge from the Lega Nord rhetoric and policy on immigration, gender and care work. The article locates populist radical right politics in the context of the international division of