ABSTRACT
Through the lens of self and other representations, this chapter explores feelings of belonging and non-belonging among recent Italian migrants to Morocco. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Italian women, the chapter focuses on the narratives pertaining to the impossibility and subsequent unwillingness to integrate into the host country. The contribution examines the self and other representations that are used as cognitive maps to make sense of their gendered experiences of living in a non-European country. These representations are seen as derived from a specific public discourse on immigrants in Italy and a particular colonial history in which they take a specific gendered and racialized character and offers an explanation on how they affect the migrants’ desire to integrate or not. The chapter further sheds light on how these representations and stereotypes are negotiated in daily relations in order to allow for relationships with Moroccan acquaintances, friends or husbands.
