Forms of Afrodescendant engagement: between biographical reflexivity and social change

Journal title MONDI MIGRANTI
Author/s Marta Visioli
Publishing Year 2026 Issue 2026/2
Language Italian Pages 22 P. 185-206 File size 280 KB
DOI 10.3280/MM2026-002010
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This contribution investigates the forms of activism, defined as engagement, of women associated with the Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali diasporas in Italy for greater social justice. In analysing them, the intersectional approach is adopted in dialogue with the concept of agency developed by Emirbayer and Mische (1998), according to which agency is a contextual and temporal process of social engagement. Specifically, the author analyses 16 biographical interviews, carried out between 2021 and 2023, with Afrodescendant women activists of various generations, on two interconnected levels: biographical, i.e. exploring biographical change in their life paths; and contextual, i.e. identifying the changes realised or planned by the interviewees within the Italian system. The research question to be answered by the researcher is therefore the following: what processes of change are generated in/by the biographical paths of the interviewees, at an individual and social level? From the results emerge, at the biographical level, a pattern of change common to the experiences of the interviewees, albeit with different nuances, characterised by a moment of biographical rupture, which coincides in many cases with a journey or the experience of diaspora, followed by a personal change and finally by the activation in one or more types of engagement, interpreted as intersectional. At the level of social impact, instead, several changes emerge connected to the temporal dimensions of present, past and future, which the interviewees are realising both within the Italian context and transnationally.

Keywords: intersectional; engagement; Afrodescendant women; agency; social change.

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Marta Visioli, Forme di engagement afrodiscendente: tra riflessività biografica e cambiamento sociale in "MONDI MIGRANTI" 2/2026, pp 185-206, DOI: 10.3280/MM2026-002010