Cities as laboratories of international welfare. Some remarks on the political value of migrant women's "spaces of freedom"

The hypothesis of the article is that pragmatist feminism, born in defense of the rights of the “invisibles” in the modern city, is the most appropriate approach to investigate if and how migrant women emerge as creative and imaginative actors turning cities in laboratories of experimentation with international welfare. First, social settlements and community centers in North American cities will be introduced as innovative spaces of democracy that gave rise to pragmatist and feminist thinking in the late nineteenth century. Then, relying on ethnographic fieldworks conducted in three urban contexts – Chicago, the town and cities of eastern Sicily and Paris - the article will focus on current migrant women’s experiences of cities and show the political value of urban spaces created by migrant women in search of a new sense of freedom, thus contributing to the advancement of a new pragmatist and feminist research perspective on cities, gender and democracy.