Immigrant Women and housing issues: a symbolic magnifying glass for social and cultural changes in Italian civil movements

In recent decades, social movements have expanded their range of action, adopting a more global perspective. Although many studies have been made of varied national and transnational movements, it still remains a little-studied field that involves the participation of immigrants, especially women, in social movements in Italy. These movements involve various problem areas. The thematic focus of our research is the housing, at the national level, and our chosen case study regards the situation as it presents itself in Rome. At a time when there seems to be less public interest in economic, social and cultural rights in favor of a broader interest in individual rights, studying the role of immigrant women in the participation of foreign communities in social movements for housing rights can encourage and support a renewed attention to this area, also because of the changing social composition of the resident population, and the emergence of old and new forms of poverty, of which the incoming immigration flows are one of the main causes. As we can see, the figure of the immigrant transforms the housing problem into a problem of co-habitation, or even better, of co-existence.