Navigating Gendered, Racialized, and Migrant Identities: Senegalese Women Artists' Reflections on Learning Italian in Rome

This chapter builds on a body of research in SLA that conceives gender as a dynamic, context-dependent social construction that has bearing on identity formation and language learning. Based on interviews with six Senegalese women artists living in Rome as part of a larger sociolinguistic, qualitative study on the Senegalese community there, this chapter focuses on different factors that contribute to these women’s acquisition and use of Italian, their investment in language learning identities, and their navigation of various communities of practice. In particular, the research explores how, on the one hand, transnational gender roles and expectations as well as the intersection of racial, gender, and linguistic identity formation in Italian society serve to silence some women as they struggle to access Italian language spaces and invest in Italian-speaking identities. On the other hand, agentive strategies that many of the women employ as they navigate hostile linguistic terrains demonstrate how they are still able to learn Italian, invest in Italian and multilingual identities, and claim the right to speak. As such, this article explores the sociolinguistic reflections of these women as they share their experiences of being simultaneously Black, Senegalese, women, migrants, artists, language learners, and transnational multilingual travelers.