Immigration, Gender and Consumer Acculturation: a Journey into the Meaningful World of Food Consumption Practices of Romanian Women in Italy

Migration, and the connected issue of feminization of the migration flows, is a phenomenon of ever increasing importance. Consumer research has dealt with consumer acculturation, as well as gender, but rarely with both, ignoring such development. Based on qualitative data on Romanian female immigrants to Italy and their food consumption practices, the author argues that these women make use of the symbolic resources originated in the marketplace in order to re-negotiate their ascribed traditional gender identity, and to negotiate their dominated position in the Italian society. In this way, the research adds a new dimension to the postassimilationist stream of research of consumer acculturation, arguing that even low-status and low income cross-border migrants who cannot participate fully in the consumer culture can use its symbolic resources, namely the marketplace representation of the modern woman, to create hybrid gender identities. At the same time, the book problematizes the traditional segmentation methods based on socio-demographic variables and offers new tools to target immigrant markets.