Migration flows and domestic work. The life stories of three migrant women who came from Albania
This paper draws on data collection from the life stories of three migrant women who came from Albania with the first migration flows in the mid ΄90s. Starting from unstructured interviews and moving towards semi-guided ones in three phases the researcher aims to get twofold information related to the topic which is an account of the hardships those women faced and the strategic life choices they made upon arrival in the host country until present time aiming to ameliorate their living conditions, ensuring a family income and further education for their children in a democratic society. On the one hand it is their narrative speech, including the level and use of the Greek language, the tone of voice, pauses and way of expression. On the other hand it is the life story itself, namely the information one gets on various aspects of their lives. The fact that they constitute a minority due to their ancestry as well as the domestic work as their main occupation for more than twenty years play an important role in the data analysis which displays qualitative characteristics and draws primarily on the notions of ‘social capital’ and ‘social identity’ and secondary on those of ‘citizenship’ and ‘gender’. The option of using the life story interviews as a research approach has to do with the fact that migrant women involved in domestic work are somewhat ‘invisible’ in the social context of the host country and there are, therefore, few data for this specific category of population. Through their own narrations and in view of the theoretical framework of this paper, they are expected to enlighten the way of accumulating and managing the social capital as well as the way of constructing the social identity as core issues in the social life of a human being.