There are many reasons for which the analysis of the transformations of the family in societies with “fluid borders”, proposed by Chiara Saraceno, is fascinating and useful. In my brief paper, I wish to focus on one of these reasons. Such an analysis allows for reflection on the links between two distinct processes of change, both central issues in contemporary society: the transformation of the way of conceiving, creating and regulating the family, and the transformations of the way in which citizenship is understood and exercised. It is obvious that citizenship is addressed here in the sociological sense, as a dimension that is not reduced to simply having documentation (formal citizenship), but that concerns the more general dynamics of social and political inclusion, as well as the full recognition of people as equal subjects (Fraser 2000) [1].
To what extent is it relevant to discuss “family” issues – observing the changes that affect this sphere and the ways in which people organise and give meaning to their relationships of care, affection and mutual exchange and responsibility – in a debate on inclusive citizenship? My paper is set around this question and thus is linked to the topic addressed in the series of conferences in which the seminar with Saraceno is set; the creation of inclusive citizenship in plural societies.
Nowadays, issues linked to the family are the object of an intense debate as well as public intervention and negotiations involving a plurality of subjects, bearers of different perspectives regard to what it means to be a family and how it is organised. If it is true that “families have never been a strictly private matter”, as clearly explained by Chiara Saraceno in the paper that inspired my considerations, “the times we live in are of the kind in which the public discourse and debate on the family – whether about legal aspects or social policies – emerges in a more explicit manner. (…) One could state that never before has the status of the family been the object of such a broad ranging public debate, also questioning the obvious fact that everyone creates and experiences their own family” (Saraceno 2013a, p. 4). [2] This is evidently linked to the profound transformations affecting the family and that are the object of Saraceno’s articulate analysis, including in particular the diversification of the ways in which family relationships are experienced, organised and perceived in our society.
Furthermore, I believe that this increased attention paid to the family is linked to the manner in which citizenship is now perceived in our society, defining who citizens are, what freedoms, rights and duties they have and what are the issues that matter in exercising substantive citizenship, a lived – not just formal – citizenship. The issues and choices linked to family and intimate life are in fact perceived by a rising number of people as issues that concern citizenship. This means that the social and legal recognition of family relations that people create within, on the margins of or outside dominant norms and models, is considered to be integrally part of the process of being recognised as citizens. Furthermore, it means that inclusion in full and complete citizenship is measured not only on the basis of classic political, civil, economic and social rights, but also on the self-determination capabilities of subjects within the intimate and family sphere, broadly understood, on their ability to shape their own relational lives in conformity with their own desires, needs and reference models (Kabeer 2005; Lister 2007). [3]
Sociological and gender studies on citizenship – an area of studies to which Chiara Saraceno has contributed, as we know – have played an important role in transforming the discourse. As known, these studies questioned the construction of the domestic sphere, the family and intimate relations as apolitical, opposed to the public sphere and therefore extraneous to the exercising of citizenship (Lister 1997; Saraceno 1988, 2008). [4] It is a wide-ranging rethinking of the meaning of citizenship, developed in the course of a number of decades, which has made possible the identification of new fields of action and debate. These, for example, include debates addressing the idea of “sexual citizenship” and “intimate citizenship.” This last concept, in particular, marks the development of a public debate on the private and intimate lives of citizens, their personal choices and a series of emerging questions concerning, “the right to choose what to do with our bodies, our feelings and emotions, our identities, our relationships, our genders, our eroticisms and our representations (Plummer 1995, p. 17; translated into Italian by the author) [5]. These choices become the object of specific narratives; they are addressed in public and become part of the identity of citizens. They become citizenship issues, such as for example, the legal and social recognition of homosexual and unmarried couples, the recognition of filiation and parenthood beyond married heterosexual couples, and access to family reunification for foreigners.
One could present many other examples. However, the point I wish to emphasise is that “fluid borders” between citizens and non-citizens – between those enjoying full citizenship and those obliged to make do with partial, weakened, mediated citizenship – are also drawn and redrawn around spheres of experience usually considered intimate and private. It is around these issues that forms of inequality and exclusion emerge and deserve our attention. On the one hand, the pluralisation of types of families is a process with positive implications, because it broadens people’s choices. On the other hand, not all people are able to choose with the same degree of freedom among the various types of families “available” and to see their choices legitimised. In this sector, the capability of choice and self-determination depend on the different cultural, social and economic resources available to a person and are therefore linked to their social and legal position. Thus new divisions are created between people having the material and symbolic resources allowing them to move relatively freely amidst the social and juridical norms regulating the family, and others for whom the choice seems more restricted and who are more subjected to these norms and provisions.
The experience of migrants is exemplary in this sense. In creating and living their family and sentimental relationships, migrants must confront not only the juridical and social norms concerning the family in their place of origin and residence, but also immigration laws and policies. The combination of these different legal systems and norms has real consequences regards to their possibility to model their family life following their own criteria and seeing their relationships acknowledged. One first example concerns norms regulating family reunification, which link the right to enjoy the right to family unity to having a number of administrative, social and economic requirements. Another significant example – taken from my research experience – concerns the rights of non-EU migrant women to choose the status to give to their personal relationships (marry, cohabitate, separate or not) following their own aspirations and ideas regarding the couple and the family, rather than considerations concerning access to and maintenance of a regular and stable legal status (Cherubini 2011; 2013) [6].
The burden of these laws and the manner in which this is manifest in the lives of migrants varies greatly depending on their legal status (regular or irregular status, type of residency permit, nationality, EU or non-EU origin, holder of formal citizenship) and their social position, gender, social class and so on. However, negotiations and forms of inclusion or exclusion experienced by migrants in this field play an important role in their progress as citizens.
I would like to conclude with one last observation. I believe that Saraceno’s analysis also provides many instruments for acknowledging the positive aspects of the pluralisation of families in our societies. It allows us to reason on the positive implications of social changes – those that involve the spreading of various ways of creating and signifying family relations – that are seen with concern by part of public opinion, and cause defensive reactions in some social, political and institutional circles. My reference is made, above all, to the stance on the defence of what is mistakenly considered as the “natural family” and to the discourses reinforcing a single and essentialized model of family, which are currently circulating in the Italian public debate and pressing for visibility and political legitimation.
Moreover, in my view the author leads us to a far-reaching reflection on a more general discourse, which considers the existence and recognition of diversified types of families as the expression of a “crisis of the family”, This would weaken the ability to create and maintain stable relationships, thus threatening the social order. In contraposition to this discourse, Saraceno states, “One could even say that excessively rigid and univocal family models (…) can reduce the ability to really form a family. They could therefore prevent the establishment of relationships involving solidarity, love, reciprocity and reproduction in contexts in which an increasing number of people are experiencing those models as being excessively rigid or inadequate, but cannot find the symbolic means or social spheres in which it is acceptable and legitimate to enter different relationships.” (Saraceno 2013b, p. 29) [7].
Following this line of reasoning, a diversification of the types of families can be seen as an element that allows the creation of networks of affection, reciprocal support and responsibility, within a context of cultural pluralism, increased complexity and rapid social change, as well as confronting changing needs and desires in the life course. The transition from a single model to open and flexible types of families can, in other words, be seen as what makes it possible to continue to “form a family” in changed social conditions, rather than what is causing the family’s crisis. On the basis of the line of reasoning followed so far, I would add that this transition is also fundamental for the creation of inclusive citizenship.
Translated by Francesca Simmons
Daniela Cherubini: Post-doctoral researcher at the department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milano-Bicocca and part of the research group “OTRAS, Perspectivas feministas en investigación social” at the University of Granada
[1] Fraser, Nancy, 2000 “Rethinking Recognition”, New Left Review, 3 (May – June): 107-120.
[2] Saraceno, Chiara, 2013a, paper presented at the conference entitled “Laicity and the family”.
[3] Kabeer, Naila (ed.) 2005, Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings and Expressions, London, Zed Books. Lister, Ruth 2007, Inclusive Citizenship: Realizing the Potential, in: Citizenship Studies, 11(1): 49-61.
[4] Lister, Ruth 1997, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives, London, MacMillan. Saraceno, Chiara 1988, La struttura di genere della cittadinanza, in: Democrazia e diritto, 28(1): 273-295. Saraceno, Chiara, 2008, Tra uguaglianza e differenza: il dilemma irrisolto della cittadinanza femminile, in: Il Mulino, (4): 603-614.
[5] Plummer, Ken 1995, Telling Sexual Stories. Power, Change, and Social Worlds, London – New York, Routledge.
[6] Cherubini, Daniela 2011, Intersectionality and the Study of Lived Citizenship: a Case Study on Migrant Women’s Experiences in Andalusia, in: Graduate Journal of Social Science, 8 (2), 114-137. Cherubini, Daniela 2013, Llegar a ser ciudadanas. Ciudadanía y prácticas participativas de las mujeres migrantes en Andalucía. Alcalà de Henares, Ayuntamiento de Alcalà de Henares.
[7] Saraceno, Chiara 2013b, Coppie e famiglie. Non è questione di natura, Milan, Feltrinelli.