Immigrants’ political engagement: gender differences in political attitudes and behaviours among immigrants in Italy

Abstract

Despite the relevance of the gender dimension of immigration, political engagement of migrant women has rarely been the focus of scholarly research. This article tries to fill this gap. Using secondary data from the “Condizione e integrazione sociale dei cittadini stranieri” [Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens] survey carried out by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in 2011–2012, we analysed the factors that at an individual level spur or inhibit migrants’ political engagement in Italy in terms of gender differences. We decided to use political interest and political participation separately as dependent dichotomous variables in logistic models that consider structural, situational, migratory, and group-related variables as independent factors. From our analysis, some relevant differences emerged both in terms of gender and in terms of political attitudes and behaviours. Our results confirm the existence of a gender gap in political engagement among migrants in Italy: migrant women are always less likely to be engaged in politics compared to men, both in terms of interest and participation. After controlling for some characteristics, this gap never disappears completely. Our results also suggest that there are some notable differences in the determinants of political engagement. Indeed, family workload inhibits the probability of political engagement only for migrant women. Furthermore, our results cast light on the crucial role of social capital in spurring political engagement for both women and men, thus contributing to reducing the gender gap.