“I Believe People Need to Know Us in Order to Integrate Us”: Immigrant Women’s Cultural Attitudes and Needs

The integration of immigrant women is crucial for achieving coexistence and social cohesion in diverse societies. In particular, the analysis of the role of migrant women has a recent but strong tradition within sociology literature. From a gender perspective, this paper analyzes how immigrant women conceive of themselves in a process of sociocultural integration. Methodologically, this is a qualitative investigation based on in-depth semi-structured interviews of 60 immigrant women. The interviews were conducted in Galicia (Spain) and include diverse nationalities from Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Following an intersectional approach, the analysis of their responses showed that the value they placed on themselves, their cultures, and/or their languages of origin in a receiving society varied depending on the co-articulation of variables such as class, race, and formal level of education. For example, being the level of education the categorizing variable, participants from the higher-educated (HE) group stressed the importance of bringing attention to their cultural particularities in order to favor immigrants’ integration, whereas those from the lower-educated (LE) group did not see any relationship between the preservation of their cultural background and the process of integration.