Moroccan migrant women: Transnationalism, nation-states and gender

Most writing on transnationalism emphasises the counter-hegemonic nature of transnational practices, by portraying them as acts of resistance and as signs of the decline of the modern nation-state. Those analyses which do acknowledge the role of nation-states and global economic restructuring in shaping and directing transnational social and political fields fail, however, to explore how these structures operate in a gendered way. By shedding light on the material and the normative conditions which forge, shape, or impede Moroccan women's movements and their transnational practices, this article suggests that rather than a uniform process, transnationalism is a complex and varied terrain experienced differently according to gender and class and their interplay with normative constraints. While not denying the symbolic and emotional significance of women's transnational practices between Italy and Morocco, this article suggests that the material, economic and normative conditions under which migrant women live impinge upon the construction of their social personhood within a transnational field.