5th RTD Framework Programme

Objectives of the project

With regard to the fields of enquiry of marriage and migration:

1. To formulate some theoretical insights on the specificity of gender relations in Europe.
2. To advance hypotheses about new contemporary forms of women’s subjectivity from the study of women as agents of change in their own lives and environment.
3. To critically examine the conceptualisation of strategic action.
4. To explore gender in the historical construction of the idea of Europe through an analysis of the activities of the group "Femmes pour l’Europe".
5. To investigate the place of women in the process of migration.
6. To study the impact of relationships to women in host countries upon the process of migration and the forms of women’s intersubjectivity in this process.
7. To explore the existence of a narrative tradition (and its possible transmission) from political migrants.
8. To analyse the strategic use of legal systems/cultures in Europe by individual men and women, and how legal cultures react; to highlight the changing relations between gender and cultural and legal norms in Europe today.

This study will consider how women are becoming subjects of their lives in two crucial fields of action and relationship, i.e. East-West migration and marriage, therefore including the study of women-men relationships. The research aims at understanding recent and undergoing changes in women’s life strategies, their worldviews and their imaginaries (subjectivity) as well as in relationships between women (intersubjectivity) in a European context. The approach combines theoretical, historical and juridical disciplinary competences in gender studies. Great relevance will be given to oral testimonies as a way of evidencing present and developing forms of subjectivity, and as a way to explore the elaboration of individual and collective strategies. The partners are chosen in such a way as to represent the North, South, East and West of Europe.

The work will include the study of theoretical problems, the analysis of legal problems and the interviewing of some 80 women in various parts of Europe. The first stages will include the elaboration of the model of a sample of interviewees and of a questionnaire: these tasks will be performed in close connection with the two other disciplinary approaches, paying particular attention to the theoretical and juridical implications of the concrete problems posed to and by women in the fields of migration and marriage. Qualitative methods will be used for the collection of oral sources (open or life story approach) and for their interpretation (textual analysis, comparison between oral and other sources, analysis of recurrent themes). The interviews will be conducted, transcribed, indexed and translated into English. Archival research will include the classification and indexing of archive documents, and their interpretation according to philological criteria and on the basis of comparative analysis. The procedures of cultural history will be largely present in this work. The theoretical, legal and cultural aspects will be intertwined as much as possible. Other stages of this work will include the elaboration and interpretation of data emerging from the research, and, importantly, the form of transmission of these results.

To produce an oral archive of women’s memories of their experience of the interaction between Eastern and Western Europe. To conceptualise subjectivity and inter-subjectivity as forms of European women’s culture. To develop proposals for the legislator and for cultural operators at various levels. Website; books and essays.