From Domestic Work to Entrepreneurship: Immigrant Women in Southern Italy within the Informal Economy in the Beauty Sector.

The assignment of immigrant women to a very limited number of sectors, particularly domestic work, reflects both a social and racial division within societies as well as a hierarchy of occupations and statuses.

I will present some findings from a qualitative study based on biographical interviews and both physical and online observations.

Women from former USSR countries, predominantly from Ukraine, have been arriving to work since the 2000s and have constituted the largest foreign nationality in Campania for many years. They primarily work in the domestic sector, particularly through work permits and visas specifically designated for domestic labor (Colucci, 2018).

This legal specificity, combined with their status as immigrant women, forces them to remain in and depend on this sector. Nevertheless, some respondents expressed their rejection of this assignment, perceiving it as degrading and lacking respectability (Skeggs, 1997).

This research aims to explore how, within a socio-economic context in Naples that is unfavorable to women, these individuals implement strategies to navigate away from these jobs, how they leverage their social and educational capitals (Bourdieu, 1986), and what skills are employed or acquired within a space where informal economy is developed and in an international economy characterized by lack of formal employment and neoliberalism.

I will highlight two main sectors, demonstrating how they are interconnected and linked to other income-generating activities, both economically and in terms of social recognition and prestige, particularly through social media platforms.

I will discuss Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), followed by the work of beauticians in various forms and related entrepreneurial activities. Through these examples, I hope to illustrate how the women studied adapt to a precarious labor market that offers few or no opportunities, turning to entrepreneurship, leveraging parts of Naples' informal economy, and depending on new forms of self-employment that is associated with social networks.