Representation of Migrant Women in Textbooks - Insights from the Italian Context

This chapter focuses on the evolution of representation of migrant women in Italian textbooks, based on images analysed by the authors in 2023, 2017, 2012. Some results are encouraging, registering an overcoming of the underrepresentation issue – the tendency to depict the migratory phenomenon as mainly “male”- observed in the past and an improvement in the representation modalities, not limited to the private sphere, but including working women, also in qualified jobs. Images are also analysed according to the “topics of suffering”, showing a significant weight of the “aesthetic topic” - connected to sublime and to action - for both women and men. A context of representation connected to transit and first reception situations prevails, following to the other media narratives and a public discourse focused on emergency. Our analysis shows how shared social values impact textbooks content, which reflects in the entity of the “Didactic Transposition Delay”.