ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses family reunification policies in Italy and deepens our understanding of how the migrant family is constructed in political and administrative regulation and policies at the Italian level in order to understand the effect of family reunification policies on family structures and their material conditions and social life.
Italian migration and reunification policies select the family members of migrants admitted for reunification on the basis of their productive capacity for the economy of the country of destination. The family members include the spouse, minor children and, in exceptional cases, the parents. In doing so, reunification policies enact a process of the institutional and legislative ‘nuclearization’ and ‘vulnerabilisation’ of the migrant family (due to the lack of other members of the household, such as grandparents or siblings, to help with the work–life balance, for example). This has negative repercussions on the reunited family in emotional and relational terms, as well as in terms of conciliating working time and family time. Moreover, by imposing material requirements – especially relating to jobs, wages and housing – reunification policies are configured in such a way as to regulate and discipline migrant work and, consequently, work as a whole.
