Soviet Signoras: Personal and Collective Transformations in Eastern European Migration [Hardcover]

Across the Western world, the air is filled with talk of immigration. The changes brought by immigration have triggered a renewed fervor for isolationism able to shutter political traditions and party systems. So often absent from these conversations on migration are however the actual stories and experiences of the migrants themselves. In fact, migration does not simply transport people. It also changes them deeply. Enter Martina Cvajner’sSoviet Signoras, a far-reaching ethnographic study of two decades in the lives of women who migrated to northern Italy from several former Soviet republics.

Cvajner details the personal and collective changes brought about by the experience of migration for these women: from the first hours arriving in a new country with no friends, relatives, or existing support networks, to later remaking themselves for their new environment. In response to their traumatic displacement, the women ofSoviet Signoras—nearly all of whom found work in their new Western homes as elder care givers—refashioned themselves in highly sexualized, materialistic, and intentionally conspicuous ways. Cvajner’s focus on overt sexuality and materialism is far from sensationalist, though. By zeroing in on these elements of personal identity, she reveals previously unexplored sides of the social psychology of migration, coloring our contemporary discussion with complex shades of humanity.

Martina Cvajneris assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento.
 

Introduction

1 A Room of One’s Own: Managing Spaces, Lives, and Laws in Residential Care Work
2 Practicing Abundance: Immigrant Women and the Challenge of Consumption
3 Strong Mothers, Great Lovers: Sexuality in Emigration
4 Getting Serious: Courtship, Love, and (Maybe) Marriage in Emigration
5 Pr