Muslim women and the negotiation of autonomous migration. : The case of female migrants from the Maghreb region in Italy

This paper deals with the case of women from the Maghreb region migrating to Italy in autonomous forms, independently from conventional dynamics of family reunification. In particular, the paper wants to highlight the specificities of women's religious trajectories and behaviours in light of their peculiar migratory status. In doing so, I will focus my attention on the interactions and the overlapping between the private and the public spheres, on the one hand, and the different spaces and geographic scales with which women have to engage, on the other hand, as viewed from the body's to the domestic reproductive and productive realms. In focussing on women's point of view, I will try to show how, while embarking on Islamic practices and discourses, these women dynamically engage with both the host and the home societies and the members of their native communities settled in Italy, in order to pursue their social mobility and empowerment strategies. These strategies are supported by a variegated set of resources. Amongst these latter, Islam plays a prominent role, not only by giving women access to public space and trans-national mobility, but above all in the process of re-interpretation of their trajectories. However, these women have a contradictory use and definition of Islam which is deeply connected with the specificity of their migratory statu