Immigrants from Cabo Verde in Italy: history and paths of socio-educative integration

Cape Verdean migration to Italy started in the early sixties of the nineteenth century as an exclusively female one, mostly caused by the demand for domestic workers by bourgeois families. In the late eighties, the Cape Verdean community migrated to Italy was still composed of more than 90% of women. In 1990, the introduction of a legislation setting forth the right to family reunification allowed many women to reunite with their husbands and children remained in their homeland. In Italy, the gradual social inclusion process and the creation of a network of Cape Verdean migrants’ association, allowed to overcome all those problems that troubled the first migrants arrived in Italy. Even though the integration process sets a context generally positive, there are still many problems, specially linked to job insecurity – also caused by the low social and professional mobility – and children’s education. Families are often divided, and mother have to raise children alone, often living with their employer. The increasing presence of Italian-born children of immigrants, simultaneously to the ‘building’ of second and third generations, have hastened the process of cultural and social hybridization, however, without weaken Italian-Capo Verdeans’ ‘Capo-Verdeanity” strong sense of social and cultural identity.