Abstract

This article uses a qualitative approach to investigate how migration, marriages and births are intertwined in the life courses of Moroccan women living in Italy. The analysis offers an interpretation which differs from that traditionally characterizing demographic studies of migration and fertility. Specifically, rather than exploring whether and under what conditions the fertility of foreigners corresponds to that of native women, the article instead seeks to reconstruct the process through which foreigners come to have children in the contexts in which they settle. This research question is broken down as follows: a) theoretically, reconsidering and questioning the assimilationist perspective; and b) empirically, tracing how reproductive events and mobility trajectories are interrelated in Italy, a context characterized by both significantly diminished birth rates and prohibitively restrictive laws for granting citizenship to the Italianborn children of foreign nationals. In conclusion, the link between migration and fertility is analyzed in light of how the reproductive cycle these families deploy across the Mediterranean evolves over time.