Outputs
The project enabled the development of a series of tangible outputs that met the various project objectives.
✦
TOOLKIT for STARTING A WOMEN'S BUSINESS
The results of the research have led to the creation of a toolkit designed to support migrant women who want to start a business in their countries of origin or in Italy.
★
ARTISTIC REPRESENTATION OF THE RESEARCH PROCESS
An audio-visual performance created by Wissal Houbabi, Houssem Ben Rabia, and Francesco De Conno that recounts a 76-day, 11,629.4 km journey of artistic exploration, exploring the emotional dimension of return.
✦
POLICY RECOMMENDATION ON ASSISTED VOLUNTARY RETURN POLICIES
A critical reflection, from a legal perspective, on the limitations of current Assisted Voluntary Return policies, with suggestions for improvement.
★
GUIDELINES FOR STRENGTHENING NETWORKS AND ASSOCIATIONS WORKING TO SUPPORT RETURNING MIGRANT WOMEN
A series of recommendations useful for building and strengthening networks and associations of women, with the aim of promoting sustainable reintegration processes that are sensitive to gender differences.
✦
TOOLKIT for STARTING A WOMEN'S BUSINESS
The basic principles underlying the Toolkit
The results of fieldwork conducted in Tunisia and Morocco in 2024 highlight the decisive contribution of migratory experiences to the personal and community transformation of returnees from Italy. Interviews conducted by the LUMSA team identified five main themes: socio-economic empowerment, culture shock, job opportunities linked to new political contexts, managing family expectations and independence, and the role of agents of change.
Most of the women we spoke to used the skills and savings they had accumulated abroad to start businesses or find new jobs. Rim (not her real name), for example, who returned to Morocco, told us: ” I work in the field of international cooperation. My country needed this, it was calling me. I sent two applications and they called me back for both. Now I am working on some projects that are committed to changing the family code and combating early marriages. .”
One significant finding concerns the importance of migration in redefining family roles. Yasmin (not her real name), who returned to Tunisia, told us: ” In Italia ho imparato a vivere da sola e a gestire le mie finanze. Quando sono tornata, questa indipendenza mi ha aiutata a farmi rispettare, sia in famiglia sia nella comunità .” Many interviewees also described how their experiences had enabled them to set up women’s solidarity networks. Latifa, an entrepreneur in Morocco, explained: “The savings I accumulated in Italy enabled me to start a business, but now I help other women to do the same, because I have seen that we can be stronger together.”
That is why we have developed a toolkit designed to support migrant women who wish to start a business, both in their countries of origin and in Italy.
A guide to support women in starting a business: from idea to implementation
This tool is the result of participatory research involving operators in the sector and is based on the analysis of interviews collected during fieldwork in Tunisia and Morocco.
The decision to return is often portrayed as a failure, and the entrepreneurial initiative of migrant women is underestimated or filtered through stereotypes. For this reason, the toolkit proposes a decolonial approach rooted in the territories, capable of valuing the knowledge, resources, and aspirations of the women involved.
What does the toolkit contain?
- A theoretical framework on entrepreneurship from a decolonial perspective.
- Practical tools to help develop a business idea based on women’s experience and resources.
- Practical exercises to accompany the ideation process: starting from oneself as a basis for developing a social impact enterprise through the enhancement of collective and community strength.
This tool, available both online and in printable format, aims to offer concrete and accessible support, capable of stimulating new ideas and sustainable paths. It also represents a starting point for reflecting on the positive impact that migrant women’s entrepreneurship can have on their communities of origin and those in which they live today.
★
RESEARCH AS A SHARED SPACE: ART, RETURN, AND DIASPORA
Living with strangeness
Returning a research path through artistic means means making visible not only the results, but also the questions, transformations, and relationships that have been activated along the way. It means, even before sharing an outcome, opening up a space of collective meaning.
In the sociological research process carried out by We Propose, we chose to collaborate with artists from different fields of expression, with the aim of exploring the same themes addressed by the empirical survey and presenting them through different and complementary languages, capable of offering new interpretations and further interpretative sensibilities.
The results of this process lie not only in what has been shown, but in what has been generated along the way. A process that, thanks to the contribution of Houssem Ben Rabia (filmmaker, actor, and videomaker), Francesco Fiore De Conno (printmaker and visual artist), and Wissal Houbabi (activist, artist, and writer) continue to raise questions about the meaning of leaving, staying, and returning in the existential and symbolic trajectories of those who originate from Morocco and Tunisia.
“Men Bled Le Bled. Cartography of Mediterranean Souls” is an audio-visual performance created by Wissal Houbabi, Houssem Ben Rabia, and Francesco De Conno, presented on September 20, 2025, as part of the third edition of Festival Spore—an artistic exhibition dedicated to diasporic cultures, hosted at Kilowatt, Serre dei Giardini Margherita in Bologna.
Inspired by questions raised by the We Propose project, the performance takes shape from an artistic, poetic, and political journey undertaken by Wissal Houbabi (Morocco) and Houssem Ben Rabia (Tunisia) to explore the meaning of “return” after a migratory experience.
A journey lasting 76 days and covering 11,629.4 km, crossing territories, languages, means of transport, and memories: by plane, ferry, taxi, bus, train, car, and on foot. A journey that touched on symbolic and personal places: from Bologna, Castel Bolognese, Forlì, Rome, Palermo, then on to Tunis, Mahdia, Sousse, Tlelsa, El Djem, Sfax, Kasserine, Khouribga, Rabat, Casablanca, Kasbah Tadla, and then back to Tunis and Rabat, before returning to Bologna.
The result is a performance that uses images, sounds, and words to convey the complexity of research that is at once artistic, social, and personal.. The visual and graphic contribution of Francesco De Conno accompanied the process, translating the intensity and stratification of experiences, encounters, and glances gathered along the way into visual form.
At the heart of the reflection: what does the return mean for women originally from Morocco and Tunisia who have lived part of their lives in Italy? Through the active involvement of other women and fellow travelers, the work becomes a space for representation and listening, for shared questions and plural answers.
The result is more than a performance: it is a tool for deep understanding, showing what it means to construct qualitative research based on interviews, relationships, and experiences. Emotions, silences, words, bodies, and glances become the materials with which an emotional and political cartography of identity, memory, and belonging is drawn.
A living work that invites reflection on what it means to be in motion—physically and emotionally—between places, stories, and borders.
To view the complete film, please write to wiho@wiho.it.
✦
POLICY RECOMMENDATION
A critical reflection, from a legal perspective, on the limitations of current Assisted Voluntary Return policies, with suggestions for improvement.
★
GUIDELINES FOR STRENGTHENING NETWORKS AND ASSOCIATIONS
A series of recommendations useful for building and strengthening networks and associations of women, with the aim of promoting sustainable reintegration processes that are sensitive to gender differences.
Approfondsci il progetto