This contribution investigates how racialized migrant women build a chosen political family in collective action and conceives of this process as a relational outcome of migrants’ mobilizations. Drawing on the concept of chosen family first elaborated by LGBTQ+ scholars, this contribution investigates how racialized migrant women come together despite their differences and reconstitute a sense of family that supports them in their everyday lives as well as in political participation. Through participant observation and interviews conducted in Rome with a group of racialized migrant women, this article sheds light on how participants conceive of each other as members of a chosen family, as a result of the mobility of affects that follows migration. Moreover, it looks at how the signifier “family” is mobilized by simultaneously drawing on and transforming traditional conceptions of family. A chosen political family contributes to building a collective identification for political engagement while also providing an affective ground in the everyday lives of racialized migrant women. The case explored provides an example of how family is mobilized by racialized migrant women for participatory and transformative purposes. This is all the more relevant for the ways it inherently contrasts with political projects endorsed by far-right and conservative religious movements that use heteronormative family as a nativist building block of the nation.
AdamiA. (2020). Visual analysis and right wing (populist) groups. PaCo Partecipazione & Conflitto, 13(1), 315–336.
2.
BaldassarL.MerlaL. (2014). Transnational families, migration, and the circulation of care. Routledge.
3.
BalibarE. (2002). What is a border? Politics and the other scene (pp. 75–86). Verso.
4.
BeyerleinK.HippJ. (2006). A two-stage model for a two-stage process: How biographical availability matters for social movement mobilization. Mobilization, 11(3), 219–240.
5.
BosiL.GiugniM.UbaK. (Eds.) (2016). The consequences of social movements. Cambridge University Press.
6.
CabralA. (1972). The role of culture in the struggle for independence. International Journal of Politics, 7(4), 18–43.
7.
Calhoun-BrownA. (2000). Upon this rock: The Black church, nonviolence, and the civil rights movement. PS Political Science and Politics, 33(2), 168–174.
8.
ChávezA. (2017). Intimacy at stake: Transnational migration and the separation of family. Latino Studies, 15(2), 50–72.
9.
De GenovaN. (2002). Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review Anthropology, 31, 419–447.
10.
De GenovaN. (2005). Working the boundaries: Race, space, and ‘illegality’ in Mexican Chicago. Duke University Press.
11.
De GenovaN. (2010). The queer politics of migration: Reflections on “illegality” and incorrigibility. Studies in Social Justice, 4(2), 101–126.
12.
della PortaD. (Ed.) (2014). Methodological practices in social movement research. Oxford University Press.
13.
EmirbayerM. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 103(2), 281–317.
14.
FreireP. (2017). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin Modern Classics.
15.
GarbagnoliS. (2017). Italy as a lighthouse: Anti-gender protests between the “anthropological question” and national identity. In KuharR.PaternotteD. (Eds.), Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality (pp. 151–174). Rowman and Littlefield.
16.
GiugniM. (2008). Political, biographical, and cultural consequences of social movements. Sociology Compass, 2(5), 1582–1600.
17.
Jackson LevinN.KattariS.PielluschE.WatsonE. (2020). “We just take care of each other”: Navigating ‘Chosen family’ in the context of health, illness, and the mutual provision of care amongst queer and transgender young adults. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(19), 7346.
HochschildA. R. (2004). Love and gold. In HochschildA. R.EhrenreichB. (Eds.), Global women: Nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy. Owl Books.
20.
Hondagneu-SoteloP. (Ed.) (2003). Gender and immigration. A retrospective and introduction. In Gender and U.S. immigration: Contemporary trends (pp. 2–19).University of California Press.
21.
HuynhJ. (2022). ‘Family is the beginning but not the end’: Intergenerational LGBTQ chosen family, social support, and health in a Vietnamese American Community Organization. Journal of Homosexuality, 70(7), 1240–1262.
22.
KemperA. (2016). Foundation of the nation: How political parties and movements are radicalizing others in favour of conservative family values and against tolerance, diversity and progressive gender politics in Europe. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
23.
KimS.FeyssaI. F. (2021). Conceptualizing “family” and the role of “chosen family” within the LGBTQ+ refugee community: A text network graph analysis. Healthcare, 9(4), 369.
24.
KnauerN. (2016). LGBT older adults, chosen family, and caregiving. Journal of Law and Religion, 31(2), 150–168.
25.
KuharR.PaternotteD. (Eds.) (2017). Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality.Rowman and Littlefield
26.
LutzH. (2016). “Good motherhood”: A dilemma for migrant women from Eastern Europe. In AmelinaA.HorvathK.MeeusB. (Eds.), An anthology of migration and social transformation: European perspectives. Springer Science.
27.
MarchettiS. (2022). Migration and domestic work. Springer.
28.
MarloweJ.BrunsR. (2021). Renegotiating family: Social media and forced migration. Migration Studies, 9(3), 1499–1516.
29.
McAdamD. (1986). Recruitment to high-risk activism: The case of freedom summer. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 64–90.
30.
McNevinA. (2006). Political belonging in a neoliberal era: The struggle of the Sans-Papiers. Citizenship Studies, 10(2), 135–151.
31.
MelucciA. (1989). Nomads of the present: Social movements and individual needs in contemporary society. Hutchinson Radius.
32.
MezzadraS.NeilsonB. (2013). Border as method. Duke University Press.
33.
NichollsW. J.MaussenM.de MesquitaL. C. (2016). The politics of deservingness: Comparing youth-centered immigrant mobilizations in the Netherlands and the United States. American Behavioural Scientist, 60(13), 1590–1612.
34.
PavanE. (2020). We are family. The conflict between conservative movements and families. Contemporary Italian Politics, 14(2), 243–257.
35.
ParreñasR. (2001). Servants of globalization. Migration and domestic work. Stanford University Press.
36.
ParreñasR. (2005). Long distance intimacy: Gender and intergenerational relations in transnational families. Global Networks, 5(4), 317–336.
37.
PassyF.MonschG. (2019). Biographical consequences of activism. In SnowD. A.SouleS. A.KriesiH.McCammonH. J. (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to social movements (2nd ed., pp. 499–514). Wiley Blackwell.
38.
PrearoM. (2020). L’ipotesi neocattolica. Politologia dei movimenti anti-gender. Mimesis Edizioni.
39.
RithholtzS.BuxtonR. (2021). Queer kinship and the rights of refugee families. Migration Studies, 9(3), 1075–1095.
40.
SchlosbergD.CarruthersD. (2010). Indigenous struggles, environmental justice, and community capabilities. Global Environmental Politics, 10(4), 12–35.
van DykeN.TaylorV. (2019). The cultural outcomes of social movements. In SnowD. A.SouleS. A.KriesiH.McCammonH. J. (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to social movements (2nd ed., pp. 482–498). Wiley Blackwell.
43.
VertovecS. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6), 1024–1054.
44.
VertovecS. (2023). Superdiversity: Migration and social complexity. Routledge.
45.
WestonK. (1991). Families we choose: Lesbians, gays, kinship.Columbia University Press.
