Migrant voices addressing social work: listening to Italian women in Germany

Abstract

The research presented here aimed to give voice to Italian women who emigrated to Germany in the 1960s by giving an authentic account of their experiences and their coping abilities through participatory research approaches and the analysis of in-depth biographic interviews conducted 2012/2013 in the South of Germany. This type of interviewing itself often enabled the women, for the first time to reflect on their migration story, on their attachment to ‘Italy’, on their relationship with the host country, its language and culture. They usually realised late in life that an originally provisional project had become permanent. Their thinking in ‘habitual patterns’ is not to be taken as a sign of failed integration but reveals a differentiated strategy of managing the ‘in-between situation’. The higher quality of services in the host country is invariably a key factor in the decision to stay. The results indicate the benefits of recognising individual strengths in personal modes of adapting to multiple and often conflicting demands in the negotiation of multi-layered value structures. Differentiated listening skills to such voices and sensitive support strategies have far-reaching implications for both research and intervention methods in social work, and not just with migrants.