A look to the North from South
Sommary
di Lucy Rojas Reischel
Fertile nature and hot climate means underdevelopment, for the men that live there are lazy, happy and backward in customs. Vice versa, poor nature and cold climate generate development and progress, for those who live in this type of land are serious, industrious and advanced. The reference clearly concerns the North and the South of the world. Not considering implicit racism that wants to be conditioned mankind only by nature for which even black skin would be the product of too much sun, this image lacks the contradictions existing within the two worlds and the question of the suburbs. The inequalities in the possession of the resources among different social groups that condition the possibilities of having access to education, to the highest forms of education work things in such a way that some quite important differences exist between the rich and the poor within each one of these worlds. With the due distinctions that have contradictions to be more evident in the South where a small elite has the majority of richness with a regular sized middle class and a great number of people at the limit of poverty. In the North instead proportions are inverted and those who live at the edge of society are a small minority. These considerations help us understand very simply that not all inhabitants from the South are poor and backward and not even all those from the North, are rich and advanced. Nevertheless among the attraction factors that cause migration movements from the South towards the North, the image of northern men occupies a very important place. To be rich, democratic and free in rich, free and democratic nations. That is why, among the housekeepers coming from developing countries, among the reasons of their emigration there is the will "to live as Italian women that have their own income, and that, in case of divorce, they don't have to go back to live under their father or brother"; and, as it concerns young Maghrebians: "I wanted to live here where relations among young people are possible without being useful to the family"; and still, among political refugees, "in this country I can vote, take part in social and political life without risking my life or my freedom". Unfortunately all these rights are still not permitted to all these foreigners: housekeepers, at home during their domestic work certainly don't have any possibilities of putting into practice the equality between man and woman, young Maghrebians are not very popular among Italian young people who are afraid of their diversity, and finally in Italy foreigners cannot vote. The idea of the immigrant as poor and backward is not very real either. Until some time ago, foreigners coming from the developing countries, came from large cities and certainly did not belong to the most poor and unprepared classes but from a social, cultural and psycho-physical point of view they belonged to the elite. In fact, the ones who emigrate are the ones who have a cultural knowledge so that they can aspire to something more and those who have the physical and psychological strength to undertake a journey leaving their home and their own roots behind. It's wrong to think that immigrated women belong to a traditional world. Aspiring to live in a more modern world, they already contest in their country homeland those aspects of tradition that bound them more to their family, at the same time that they seem more attracted by the use of modern technology. In a meeting held in Viareggio some time ago among Italian and foreign members of the Association for peoples rights, about confrontation on the experience of the relationship with health, it emerged how foreign women were more attracted by modern medicine, by the use of radiology, of sophisticated equipment while Italian women were attracted by traditional medicine, by the use of medicinal herbs, astrology and cartomancy. That because modernness in poor countries is conceived as the technological civilisation which is accessible for the few, whereas the idea of progress of western people on behalf of the ilite concerns the return to nature. Nevertheless, living in richer environments accustoms to the use of more means, and the existence of the well-being status makes it so that the use of delegating institutions in order to resolve one's own needs is a widespread custom in the West. On the contrary, the widespread poverty and the absence of well-being states and status of rights has those who live in those places more accustomed to do things on their own, to entrust the family with the resolution of needs and to work with their own means. At times the poverty of means lets creativity and solidarity emerge more easily. The team work in the search for common needs among Italian and foreign women in order to elaborate common projects suggests us a series of thoughts. For the immigrants the attendance to social, medical and educational services places a great number of problems. The rigidity of schedules, the excessive bureaucracy, and the inherited mono-culture that is passed as universal, are questions that immigrants notice more because they are more fragile, more tried by the events but that aren't suitable for Italian users as well. Therefore it is commonly thought that a work that attempts to make services more intercultural and human may help both groups. The diffusion of more cultures, the use of multivalence in the interventions will surely improve structures for everyone. The preparation to the introduction in the host society that implies the recovery of one's own professional skills and the knowledge of the service system concerns only foreigners instead. The Association PROFICUA (PROfessionalita', al Femminile Interculturale Associata) (i.e. Female Intercultural Professional skills Association) within the Association for people's rights in Milan arises from the need to favour the change of services and the introduction of immigrants in the host society at the best conditions. In the beginning the Association was exclusively made up of social, medical and education operators and the foreigners were all political refugees. In 1991 the Association is registered in the court and the first projects are elaborated. A welcome centre for foreign women and children is proposed to the Commune of Milan, which some time later caolls for tenders and the association takes part in it, a further one was interrupted because fundamentally the Commune didn't have any interest in opening the for the women centre. In 1992, welcome centres for foreigners start being threatened of dismantlement. The second project concerns a research on the residential need of immigrated women that is presented to the institutions in order to obtain financial grants. An answer is still awaited. At this point, problems start arousing within the group. The initial idea was that of using each one her own professional skill, but it isn't possible at once because the big projects that would allow everyone to do her job don't take off. Italian women are the first to abandon. They are not willing to work with their own means and they don't seem to be accustomed to the use of creativity. For foreign women instead, who aspire to the possession of richer means but who come from poorer realities the problem, after their initial disillusion, is not so much deep-rooted. The majority of us, though graduated do not practice the profession and therefore we are more used to do the best we can using poorer means and creativity. Without renouncing to the recovery project of the professional skills acquired in our home country we are starting to use and put on the market, those aspects of our culture such as the know-how of culinary art, the use and consumption of food, the cuisine, the languages, the handling of the relations between sexes and among different generations, and the service system in the developing countries. These are the things that allow the Association to exist. The arrangement of courses dealing with the knowledge of "other" cultures for Italian operators, the arrangement of multiethnic dinners and parties, conferences and trips abroad are the supplies we can put on the Italian market together with the sale of artisanship books. However, stereotypes emerge whenever there is an opportunity. Some time ago, during a party arranged as an interval at a conference, a Neapolitan woman, coming up to me - I come from Chile - and to a Brazilian woman both sitting and watching others dance, says: "You, South Americans, should dance!" - "Obviously" - we answered - "Then you, Neapolitan, should sing and play the mandolin." A little later, while a training exercise of non-verbal communication was being carried out, I identified a participant who had evident difficulties in physical contact with others, thinking she was German, where as she came from Lebanon. Southern women are perceived as infantile, dependent, warm while northern ones as independent, mature, cold. On the contrary in the North we found a lot of dependence and infantilism. They are young for longer periods and they reach an adult age after forty. Many people have normal and long-lasting relations, a steady job and their own house after the age of forty. Having crossed through entire continents we are necessarily more independent, instead. Finally a question that differentiates us a lot, but that can usefully be exchanged among women of different cultures, is the use of the pronouns "we" and "them". European women are more worried about themselves and we are about our group of belonging. The exchange could help to get to the right half- caste-balance. A new term that means realising that we are the most important thing in the world, but that, at the same time, alone, we are not more important than a leaf carried away by the wind.