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“I Believe People Need to Know Us in Order to Integrate Us”: Immigrant Women’s Cultural Attitudes and Needs

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Abstract

The integration of immigrant women is crucial for achieving coexistence and social cohesion in diverse societies. In particular, the analysis of the role of migrant women has a recent but strong tradition within sociology literature. From a gender perspective, this paper analyzes how immigrant women conceive of themselves in a process of sociocultural integration. Methodologically, this is a qualitative investigation based on in-depth semi-structured interviews of 60 immigrant women. The interviews were conducted in Galicia (Spain) and include diverse nationalities from Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Following an intersectional approach, the analysis of their responses showed that the value they placed on themselves, their cultures, and/or their languages of origin in a receiving society varied depending on the co-articulation of variables such as class, race, and formal level of education. For example, being the level of education the categorizing variable, participants from the higher-educated (HE) group stressed the importance of bringing attention to their cultural particularities in order to favor immigrants’ integration, whereas those from the lower-educated (LE) group did not see any relationship between the preservation of their cultural background and the process of integration.

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Notes

  1. Originally titled Muller inmigrante, lingua e sociedade. Novas perspectivas para a integración, it has been funded by a grant from the Xunta de Galicia for the 2014–2017 period.

  2. The data from this section is from the Municipal Population Census dated January 1, 2015 (Padrón Municipal de Habitantes), which was published by the INE (National Institute of Statistics) in 2016.

  3. All testimonials taken from the interviews and included in the results are our own translations from Spanish and, occasionally, from Galician or (Brazilian) Portuguese.

  4. According to Ethnologue (Lewis et al. 2016), 5,210,000 people speak Wolof in Senegal. Even though Senegal’s population censuses do not reflect ethnicity, Wolof is Senegal’s largest ethnic group. According to the most recent household survey, 45% of Senegal’s population is of Wolof ethnicity (ESAM II 2002).

  5. Bini, also called Edo, is the primary language of the Edo people in Nigeria. One million people speak Bini as their native language. However, it is not one of the country’s top three languages in terms of the number of speakers (Lewis et al. 2016).

  6. Brazilian alcoholic beverage made with cachaça, sugar, lime, and ice.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Xunta de Galicia under Grant Axudas para proxectos de investigación desenvolvidos por investigadores emerxentes do SUG (Grants for research projects developed by emerging researchers from the Galician University System).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultade de Filoloxía e Tradución, Universidade de Vigo, Campus Lagoas Marcosende s/n, 36310, Vigo, Pontevedra, Spain

    Laura Rodríguez Salgado

  2. Universidade de Vigo, Vigo, Spain

    Iria Vázquez Silva

Authors
  1. Laura Rodríguez Salgado
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  2. Iria Vázquez Silva
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Correspondence to Laura Rodríguez Salgado.

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Rodríguez Salgado, L., Vázquez Silva, I. “I Believe People Need to Know Us in Order to Integrate Us”: Immigrant Women’s Cultural Attitudes and Needs. Int. Migration & Integration 19, 451–471 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-018-0553-5

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