1. See, for example, Castles, Stephen and Miller, Mark J., The Age of Migration, Macmillan, New York, 1993, pp. 8–9; Phizacklea, Annie, ‘Migration and globalisation: a feminist perspective’, in Koser, Khalid and Lutz, Helma (eds). The New Migration in Europe, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1997, pp. 21–38.Google Scholar

2. At the end of 1996, for example, 80 per cent of Moroccan immigrants in Italy were males, as were 84 per cent of Tunisians and 95 per cent of Senegalese. Conversely 85 per cent of Cape Verdeans were female, as were 67 per cent of Filipino immigrants. These figures are from Caritas di Roma, Immigrazione dossier statistico '97, Anterem, Rome, 1997, p. 102.Google Scholar

3. See the evidence reviewed in Boyle, Paul, Halfacree, Keith and Robinson, Vaughan, Exploring Contemporary Migration, Longman, London, 1998.Google Scholar

4. As pointed out by Robin Cohen in his unpublished paper, ‘Seven forms of international migration: a global sketch’, presented at an international workshop on European migration, Hydra, Greece, May 1997.Google Scholar

5. See Morokvasic, Mirjana, ‘In and out of the labour market: immigrant and minority women in Europe’, New Community, 19, 3, 1995, pp. 459–83.Google Scholar

6. My evidence is based on twenty-five semi-structured interviews with Cape Verdean women who had migrated to Italy; ten of the interviews took place in Rotterdam with women who had moved on from Italy.Google Scholar

7. As recently as the 1940s, two serious famines led to the death of 45,000 Cape Verdeans. See Carreira, A., The People of the Cape Verde Islands, Hurst, London, 1982.Google Scholar

8. Ishemo has argued that the use of forced labour by the Portuguese in the colonies partially explains the existence of labour migration as a structural feature of Cape Verde. See Ishemo, Shubi, ‘Forced labour and migration in Portugal's African colonies’, in Cohen, Robin (ed.). The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 162–5. In the mid-1980s the size of the Cape Verdean diasporic communities was estimated as follows: USA 250,000; Portugal 50,000; Angola 40,000; Senegal 25,000; Holland 10,000; Italy 10,000; France 9,000.Google Scholar

9. This was reiterated by the Cape Verdean Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1996: Lopes, A., Address to the Opening Session of the Conference ‘Cape Verdeans and Cities in Europe’, Rotterdam, 1996.Google Scholar

10. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, remittances were equal to between 36 per cent and 62 per cent of GDP. See Foy, C., Cape Verde: Politics. Economics and Society, Pinter, London, 1988.Google Scholar

11. According to Lesourd, M., Etat et Société aux Iles du Cap-Vert, Karthala, Paris, 1995.Google Scholar

12. No reliable data exist on the number of Cape Verdeans in Italy in the 1970s. Carreira, in his classic study The People of the Cape Verde Islands, estimated that by 1972 there were approximately 3400 Cape Verdean women working in Italy.Google Scholar

13. I have dealt with this mechanism elsewhere: see Andall, Jacqueline, ‘Catholic and state constructions of domestic workers: the case of Cape Verdean women in Rome in the 1970s’, in Koser, and Lutz, , The New Migration in Europe, pp. 124–42.Google Scholar

14. de Lourdes Jesus, Maria, Ricordai, Sinnos, Rome, 1996, p. 92. The author originally came to Italy as a domestic worker and now works as a journalist—an exceptional case.Google Scholar

15. Cape Verdean men also migrated to other African countries as farm labourers and petty traders. See Finan, T. and Henderson, H., ‘The logic of Cape Verdean female-headed households: social response to economic scarcity’. Urban Anthropology, 17, 1, 1988, pp. 87–103.Google Scholar

16. Jesus, de Lourdes, Ricordai, p. 92.Google Scholar

17. An issue often commented upon by the international press—see, for example, Owen, Richard, ‘Italy's legal loopholes fuel fears of migrant invasion’, The Times, 13 August 1998.Google Scholar

18. For more details, Andall, , ‘Catholic and state constructions of domestic workers’.Google Scholar

19. Bagnasco, A., Tre Italic Il Mulino, Bologna, 1977.Google Scholar

20. Isabella recounted that there were six Cape Verdean women working as domestics at this time—herself, her sister, her close friend Lucy and three others she knew by name.Google Scholar

21. The Portuguese school was established in Rome in 1971 to assist Portuguese-speaking workers living in the area, offering a range of educational courses from basic literacy to the maturità (high school diploma). Many Cape Verdean women took advantage of them, boosting registrations to a peak of 358 in the year 1980–1. Marta had only completed her education to primary level in Cape Verde, reflecting the under-development of the economy and social services under Portuguese colonial rule. In the 1960s, some 80 per cent of the Cape Verdean population was illiterate. See Goutier, H., ‘Cape Verde: making the best of history’, The Courier, 158, July–August 1996, pp. 15–31.Google Scholar

22. Given the high rate of male outmigration from Cape Verde, especially in the past, there is a high incidence of single-parenthood in the islands.Google Scholar

23. This was despite the fact that the Church in Cape Verde openly condemned maternity outside marriage. See Finan, and Henderson, , ‘The logic of Cape Verdean female-headed households’.Google Scholar

24. It is worth remembering that contraception and abortion provision were not freely available in Italy at this time. One interviewee told me that several of her Cape Verdean friends had had back-street abortions in Rome in the early 1970s and it seems clear that contraception and pregnancy were problematic issues for these women. In fact, as Marta stated: ‘I was scared of having male friends, of going out with anyone, because you never knew how things would end up.’ Google Scholar

25. Even today, Italy has a low number of single-parent families compared to other West European countries.Google Scholar

26. Rollins, J., Between Women: Domestics and their Employers, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1985; Romero, M., Maid in the USA, Routledge, London, 1992.Google Scholar

27. See the proceedings of the Eighth ACLI-COLF Congress, Le Colf nella società e net movimento operaio, ACLI-COLF, Siena, 1973.Google Scholar

28. INPS data only apply to those women who are regularly employed and for whom national insurance contributions are paid. These figures therefore only offer a partial enumeration of the overall situation.Google Scholar

29. Bimbi, F., ‘Three generations of women: transformation of female identity models in Italy’, in Cicioni, M. and Prunster, N. (eds), Visions and Revisions: Women in Italian Culture, Berg, Oxford, 1993, pp. 149–66.Google Scholar

30. Bimbi, F., ‘La debolezza delle politiche familiari in Italia: un caseo di federalismo mancato?’, in Bimbi, F. and Del Re, A. (eds), Genere e democrazia, Rosenberg and Sellier, Turin, 1997, pp. 193–216.Google Scholar

31. Dell' Orto, F. and Taccani, P., ‘Family carers and dependent elderly people in Italy’, in Twigg, J. (ed.). Informal Care in Europe, University of York Press, York, 1994, pp. 109–28. For the Italian situation in a European context see also Crosby, G. (ed.), The European Directory of Older Age, Centre for Policy on Ageing, London, 1993; McGlone, F. and Cronin, N., A Crisis in Care? The Future of Family and State Care for Older People in the European Union, Family Policy Studies Centre, London, 1994.Google Scholar

32. Special thanks to Pedro Landim and Joke van der Zwaard for assistance in Rotterdam.Google Scholar

33. Finan, and Henderson, , ‘The logic of Cape Verdean female-headed households’.Google Scholar

34. This was certainly not the case if women married Cape Verdean men who were living and working in Italy. Cape Verdean men's employment in Italy is certainly not marked by the same degree of stability that women find on the labour market. Interview narratives confirm that men's employment in Italy has continued to be more precarious and sporadic than women's.Google Scholar

35. This can be contrasted with one of my interviewees still living in Italy who obtained a degree in Italy but was still working as an hourly-paid domestic.Google Scholar

36. This was the case of Gianna, who had worked in Italy for two years (1974–6), returning to live in Cape Verde after marriage. Her husband had been a sailor but was made redundant in 1986 and the family began to struggle financially. In 1988 she re-migrated to Italy as a live-in worker, leaving her five children with her husband in Cape Verde.Google Scholar

37. It is impossible to determine the number of Cape Verdean women who have remained single, although the president of the Cape Verdean women's association in Rome highlighted this as a problem. Some evidence of this can be seen at the Tra Noi centre in Rome, an historic meeting place for Cape Verdean women. Recent and older migrants meet here but amongst those older women who have been in Italy for a long time, a fair number had never married or had children (and expressed to me some regret about this). This is perhaps not a surprising outcome given the single-sex nature of Cape Verdean migration to Italy.Google Scholar

38. Castles, and Miller, , The Age of Migration, pp. 80, 97.Google Scholar

39. See Staring, Richard, ‘Scenes from a fake marriage: notes of the flip-side of embeddedness’, in Koser, and Lutz, , The New Migration in Europe, pp. 224–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. Ibid., for an account of a failed attempt to arrange a contract marriage between a Turkish man and a Surinamese woman in the Netherlands.Google Scholar

41. Circular 156/91, Lavoratori extracomunitari da adibire ai servizi domestic!—nuovi ingressi. It is significant that this was passed only one year after the introduction of the Martelli Law (Law 39, 1990), which had signalled the restrictive orientation of the Italian authorities with regard to immigration.Google Scholar