From “disposable labour” to “desirable citizen”: Chinese migrant worker-turned-marriage migrants negotiating citizenship pathways in Singapore

Conceptual contours of migration studies in and from Asia

Post-migration adaptation has been a major theme in migration studies. Yet extant research has typically focused on immigrants who will presumably settle in the host society and overlooked temporary migrants, especially those who move in later life. While the former are expected to assimilate into the host society over time, temporary migrants spend limited and intermittent periods of time in the host society only. The normative frameworks of migrant adaptation are, therefore, inadequate for analyzing the experience of older temporary migrants. Drawing on ethnographic data collected from 41 Chinese grandparenting migrants in Singapore, this article uses temporariness as a central analytic lens to examine their post-migration adaption experience, including their attitudes toward their temporary presence in the host country, the constraints they encountered as temporary migrants, and the strategies they used to cope with such experiences. We introduce the concepts of “objective temporariness” and “subjective temporariness” to illustrate how the duration of stay allowed by the host state and migrants’ feelings toward their temporary presence, respectively, affect migrants’ intentions and ability to adapt to the new environment. Conceptualizing temporariness as a continuum, we show how diverse forms of temporariness (transient versus extended) differentially shaped the adaptation patterns of short-term stayers (staying one to three months each time) and long-term stayers (staying at least a year or more). Our findings underscore the importance of analyzing the temporal alongside the spatial when examining temporariness as a condition experienced by older temporary migrants and as a tool used by nation-states to regulate migrant populations.

BackgroundIn Australia only 2.2% of published health research has focused on multi-cultural health despite the increase of culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Research on the perceptions and experiences of health care professionals (HCPs) in engaging with refugee and migrant women is also lacking. Given the integral role of HCPs in providing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care for these populations, an understanding of the challenges they experience is required. Therefore, this study sought to examine the perspectives and practices of Australian HCPs with regard to the provision of SRH care for refugee and migrant women.MethodsEmploying qualitative methods, twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with HCPs representing various professions, work experiences, cultural backgrounds, age and healthcare sectors. The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis and the socio-ecological model was utilised to interpret the data.ResultsThe complexities of HCP’s engagement with refugee and migrant women were identified in three major themes: Being a Migrant; Gender Roles and SRH Decision-making; and Women in the Healthcare System. HCPs discussed the impact of accessing SRH care in women’s country of origin and the influence of re-settlement contexts on their SRH knowledge, engagement with care and care provision. Perception of gender roles was integral to SRH decision-making with the need to involve male partners having an impact on the provision of women-centred care. Barriers within the healthcare system included the lack of services to address sexual functioning and relationship issues, as well as lack of resources, time constraints, cost of services, and funding.ConclusionAustralian HCPs interviewed reported that migrant and refugee women do not have appropriate access to SRH care due to multifaceted challenges. These challenges are present across the entire socio-ecological arena, from individual to systemic levels. Multiple and multidimensional interventions are required to increase SRH utilisation and improve outcomes for refugee and migrant women.

In Australia and Canada, the sexual health needs of migrant and refugee women have been of increasing concern, because of their underutilization of sexual health services and higher rate of sexual health problems. Previous research on migrant women’s sexual health has focused on their higher risk of difficulties, or barriers to service use, rather than their construction or understanding of sexuality and sexual health, which may influence service use and outcomes. Further, few studies of migrant and refugee women pay attention to the overlapping role of culture, gender, class, and ethnicity in women’s understanding of sexual health. This qualitative study used an intersectional framework to explore experiences and constructions of sexual embodiment among 169 migrant and refugee women recently resettled in Sydney, Australia and Vancouver, Canada, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Sri Lanka, India, and South America, utilizing a combination of individual interviews and focus groups. Across all of the cultural groups, participants described a discourse of shame, associated with silence and secrecy, as the dominant cultural and religious construction of women’s sexual embodiment. This was evident in constructions of menarche and menstruation, the embodied experience that signifies the transformation of a girl into a sexual woman; constructions of sexuality, including sexual knowledge and communication, premarital virginity, sexual pain, desire, and consent; and absence of agency in fertility control and sexual health. Women were not passive in relation to a discourse of sexual shame; a number demonstrated active resistance and negotiation in order to achieve a degree of sexual agency, yet also maintain cultural and religious identity. Identifying migrant and refugee women’s experiences and constructions of sexual embodiment are essential for understanding sexual subjectivity, and provision of culturally safe sexual health information in order to improve well-being and facilitate sexual agency.

This article examines the narratives of mixtec women from Oaxaca, Mexico, who migrated to Oxnard City, California, USA. The ethnographies derived from their migratory process were analyzed through 27 in-depth interviews. The complexity involved in the study of international migration, intersected with gender and ethnicity, has required a multi-methodology in accordance with this specificity. Through a decolonized investigation this research examine the situations of inequality and oppression that affect indigenous women, defined in different historical contexts than those of urban, white, western and heterosexual women, which classic feminism has formulated. The first section of the article focuses on the narratives of transmigration, which are analyzed in relation to the dimensions that influence and intervene in terms of gender roles. The second section explore the complexity of transnational motherhood in the host society as mothers or mothers-to-be, approaching the multidynamics of transnational care, and how the health management of pregnancy is a complex issue in the face of cultural difference and the lack of an inter-ethnic sensitive health care system. This research highlights the challenges and cultural impacts that they face as indigenous women, migrant women, and mothers, in a transnational and migratory context. Everything related to their role as mothers is very complex, since they are the ones who entirely take care of their family. This assumption of care empowers the agency of these women who are attentive to their family on both sides of the border. This research has focused an approach on these subjects and underline how colonialism, gender and ethnocentrism constantly act on indigenous populations, greatly affecting women, as well as to highlight on the transformative and significant involvement and agency of these women.

In going beyond the general observation in the geographical literature that migrant women are often rendered ‘out of place’ in both globalisation discourses and the material spaces of the global city, we draw on a comparative frame in order to tease out more specific insights. The paper compares the sexualised moral discourses generated by the presence of two different groups of transnational migrant women in the city – foreign domestic workers primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka who provide domestic service in home spaces, and pei du ma ma (‘study mothers’) from China accompanying their young children studying in Singapore schools. While the two groups are very different from each other (in terms of nationality, ethnicity, socio‐economic status, and immigration category), they are both inserted into the globalising city as ‘foreign women’ and independent migrants who are unaccompanied, and therefore ‘unprotected’, by male figures. Both groups inspire within local society certain anxieties of the other, as each in a different but equally uncomfortable way can become potentially proximate to the ‘self’. While fear of the foreign domestic worker's sexualised danger is primarily rooted in her physical proximity in the privatised spaces of the home, suspicions surrounding the study mother tend to stem from her racial proximity. These forms of sexualised politics have a crippling effect on the forging of progressive feminist alliances between local and migrant women. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The paper presents the outcomes of the field research oriented towards studying the usage of urban space by female labor migrants from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in Saint Petersburg in comparison with the practices that they have developed in their places of origin. The paper is based on the sociology of everyday life. The authors focus on the migrants’ transnational practices and a scope of their integration into the host society, as well as the perception of the urban space of Saint Petersburg in comparison to the migrants’ homelands. The informants for the study were 28 legal transnational labor migrants. The methods of the research are in-depth interviews in combination with mental maps. The hypothesis of the study includes two assumptions. The first is that migrant women from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have transnational practices that indicate their inclusion in the social networks of both the country of origin and the host society, while their everyday life will be characterized by a rather low degree of integration into the host society. The second assumption is that the mental maps of St. Petersburg that were drawn by the informants are detailed and diverse compared to the mental maps of the place of residence in their homelands. These assumptions were partly confirmed. Results of the inquiry raise new research questions that demand further research of migrant workers to be answered.

This paper focuses on migrant women’s cross border marriages with local men and their position in these marriages under Turkey’s changing migration legislation in the last decades. Based on 39 in-depth interviews with migrant women from Kyrgyzstan, public employees, lawyers, and İstanbul Kyrgyz consulate workers in the summer months of 2021 and 2022, this study points out the unequal position of migrant women in cross border marriages. The findings suggest that the increasing surveillance of the public authorities on migrant women lays the ground for different forms of male violence in cross border marriages. Under the unequal position in these marriages and restrictions on migrants, migrant women actively or passively “bargain with patriarchy” over gender roles (Kandiyoti 1988). Migrant women usually passively resist to overcome these difficulties by embarrassing traditional gender roles such as by being “a good wife and mother”, giving birth, adopting religious practices and limiting their social relationships with their friends. Although passive resistance through traditional gender roles make cross border marriages possible for migrant women, migrant women also keep silent against male violence.

Background Forced migrant women are increasingly becoming destitute whilst pregnant. Destitution may exacerbate their poor underlying physical and mental health. There is little published research that examines this, and studies are needed to ensure midwifery care addresses the specific needs of these women. This study aimed to explore vulnerable migrant women's lived experience of being pregnant and destitute. Methods Six in-depth individual interviews with forced migrant women who had been destitute during their pregnancy were conducted over one year. Results A lack of food and being homeless impacted on women's physical and mental health. Women relied on support from the voluntary sector to fill the gaps in services not provided by their local authorities. Although midwives were generally kind and helpful, there was a limit to how they could support the women. Conclusions There is a gap in support provided by local authorities working to government policies and destitute migrant pregnant women should not have to wait until 34 weeks gestation before they can apply for support. Home office policy needs to change to ensure pregnant migrant women receive support throughout their pregnancy.

ObjectiveThis study was part of a project promoted with the caption ‘Vulnerable, pregnant and new in Norway - Safe during childbirth with a multicultural doula.’ The project aimed to provide multicultural doulas who could strengthen maternity care and give migrant women safe births. The aim of the study was to examine how the multicultural doulas experienced their work with newly arrived migrant women during pregnancy and childbirth. MethodsA qualitative approach was used for the data collection and the data was collected from nine in-depth interviews with multicultural doulas. All the participants were educated by Oslo University Hospital, Norway, where they worked as doulas. The method of data analysis was inspired by Granheim and Lundman's qualitative content analysis. ResultsThe qualitative content analysis revealed four categories: providing important knowledge, creating continuity of care for migrant women, being aware of migrant women’s vulnerability, and building a cultural bridge. One main theme emerged: Feeling like a mother for vulnerable migrant women and a person who builds a cultural bridge between them and maternity care in Norway. ConclusionThe multicultural doulas saw themselves as a resource for both newly-arrived migrant women and midwives during pregnancy and childbirth. The findings suggested that their presence can strengthen maternity care for migrant women by providing information, continuity, and a cultural bridge between migrant women and maternity care in Norway.

EPA-0244 – Characteristics of intercultural psychotherapy, criteria for admission and attitudes of migrant women

Transnational migration often results in the reconfiguration of established gender relations. This article addresses the ways in which ideas of love and intimacy are reproduced and challenged in the life courses of Sierra Leonean women who live in France. It explores the transformation of women’s perception of love over the life-course, from situations of intimate partner violence to relationships established later in life and based, as these women see it, on individual autonomy and gender equality. Their narratives do not rely on ideals of ‘romantic love’ but reveal, rather, the importance of life trajectories in reframing individual subjectivities informed by gender relations in an adverse social context. The context of migration tends to assign rigidly gendered roles to migrant women: on entering their host societies, they often find themselves socially isolated and economically dependent on immigrant men. In articulating the process by which they fled unhealthy marriages and tried to establish new relationships, Sierra Leonean women express freedom from collective norms concerning marriage and present love as an individual choice. However, those choices were possible only later in the life course, when women no longer need to consider their reproductive role as central to their lives. The material and social conditions for finding love are associated with the opportunities given by age.

Refugee MGP: Creating a midwifery group practice for refugee women

Power, Belonging, and Respectability

A qualitative study on community-based doulas’ roles in providing culturally-responsive care to migrant women in Australia