Daughters per hour
Daughters per hour Project based on the book of the writer Valeria Mancini about migrant women coming to Italy to work as carers. In Italy there are 774 thousands carers, 700 thousands are foreigners and 62% have left their children behind. 43% live and work in Italy as illegal immigrant, 23% have resident permit but still work without a proper contract. Carers or “Badanti” as they are called in Italian, are women who leave their countries, their husbands and children behind to come to work and earn money in Italy taking care of elderly people. They do the unwanted job of taking care of our grandparents or parents when our families cannot do it anymore. Most of them come from countries like Russia, Ukraine, Albania, Morocco, Moldavia, they migrate to Italy and often go to live with the elderly person they care for on a 24/7 basis. My project focuses on the life of these women and their daily routine, their role as carers and who they are outside the house and what they love doing in their little free time. In Italy most of these women are just considered for their role, "as carers" and some of them cannot have a life outside their job as they are here without permission, some of them won't give their real name so they live like ghosts, a partial life which is not the one they dreamt of but the only one they could find as escape to be able to give a future to their children. They become in home nurses, carers but also friends, companions and daughters for many of them, having to live day by day with the person they look after. Not all the cohabitations are easy as they come from very different backgrounds and cultures and often have to deal with different way of living or with elderly people affected by alzheimer or degenerative diseases that are not easy to be dealt with.