Women Migrants in Italy: A Double Peripherality
Women Migrants in Italy: A Double Peripherality

Summary/Abstract: After the fall of the communist regime, the economic migration increased significantly within the Romanian society, as people were seeking higher conditions of life in western countries. Being a major social phenomenon, the economic migration became a frequent literary theme in the postcommunist Romanian literature, as Sanda Cordoș notices. Whether fictional or autobiographical, the literary works on migration depict the multiple identity traumas that the emigrant subject generally suffers. Originating from a peripheral country and culture in Eastern Europe, Romanian migrants experience multiples affects such as profound traumas, due to the identity split that is generally accentuated by the hard conditions of work in the countries where they travel, and by the affective separation from their families. By analysing three contemporary novels, namely Dan Lungu’s The Little Girl Who Played at Being God [Fetița care se juca de-a Dumnezeu], Liliana Corobca’s Kinderland and Liliana Nechita’s Bitter Cherries [Cireșe amare], the present paper outlines the double peripheral status of women emigrants in Italy who are perceived in their marginality not only as Romanian migrants, but mainly as female ones in a masculine dominated society. These literary works emphasize the difficulties that women as mothers and wives encounter in a completely foreign western culture and the multiple traumas that they suffer together with the children who remain in a peripheral space and continually wait the return of the protective mother.

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