Family and Work Dynamics of Chinese Women Immigrants in Italy

In recent decades, international migration has reshaped family structures and gender relations across Europe, with immigrant families undergoing profound transformations in household organization, intergenerational ties, and childcare practices. While much research has examined migrants’ economic activities, relatively little attention has been paid to the private sphere of family life, particularly from a gendered perspective. This dissertation addresses this gap by focusing on the experiences of Chinese migrant women in Italy, analyzing how they balance domestic responsibilities, negotiate intergenerational relationships, and manage childcare strategies within the migration context. Drawing on 42 in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted between 2023 and 2024 in northern Italy, this study examines three interconnected aspects of family life. First, it explores the division of household labor, considering how gender norms, working conditions, and immigration status shape domestic arrangements. Second, it analyzes intergenerational relationships, showing how migration reshapes cooperation, conflict, and the redistribution of resources across generations. Third, it investigates childcare practices, identifying strategies such as kinship-supported mothering, transnational child circulation, and self-reliant mothering. The findings reveal that Chinese migrant women navigate complex tensions between cultural expectations, structural constraints, and personal aspirations. Migration creates opportunities for renegotiating roles and gaining autonomy, but enduring gendered expectations and limited institutional support often reproduce inequalities. Nevertheless, women actively adapt, negotiate, and resist, thereby reshaping family dynamics and caregiving practices. By situating Chinese women’s family experiences in Italy within broader debates on gender, migration, and family transformation, this dissertation contributes both empirically and theoretically. It demonstrates that family life is not merely a site of reproduction of traditional roles but also a space of agency and change, offering new insights into how women mediate between continuity and transformation in transnational contexts.