Dones, immigració i identitat: quines lectures?

Abstract

The question of identity in general has been addressed repeatedly without ever being rigorously defined. Three notions are addressed here: femininity, foreignness and ethnicity. The study population comprises intellectual women of North-African origin who have emigrated for political reasons to Europe, where they can progress thanks to a political and cultural system suited to their expectations. It is false to believe that colonised people can recover overnight after more than one century of domination. These women live their identity badly. In a large number of cases, aided by men, they make a major investment in their educational training. Underprivileged groups will also come to awareness of this through war. Sending their children to school constitutes a commitment to a synthesis of between what they are and what they would like their children to be. The education of young girls was one way of fighting against colonisation and racist and dominating prejudice, but these womens legacy is difficult to transmit in a Europe characterised by a negative discourse against Islam. That is why most of them live in a situation of unrest or unease. When they talk about gender and culture equality, they are accused of betrayal by Islam supporters, and when they talk about a possible modernness in Moslem countries they are regarded as allies of the fundamentalists. This is why immigrant intellectual women have a hard road to follow.