Maternal Practices of Korean Healthcare Workers in Germany

Abstract

In the framework of the former West German government’s “guest worker” (Gastarbeiter) recruitment policy between 1955 and 1973, more than 11,000 South Korean nurses and nurse assistants moved to Germany to work in medical or nursing institutions to fill a gap in the provision of healthcare services as “guest workers.” Drawing on personal accounts, the current empirical study explores mothering practices primarily between the 1960s and 1990s in the families of Korean migrant healthcare workers who resided in Germany over the course of their working lives and/or returned to Korea. This study charts the manner in which these migrant mothers navigated and balanced competing social discourses around mothering that emerged from the different cultural and historical backgrounds in a new host society. The concepts around mothering consist of the ideology of “intensive mothering,” the Confucian ideal of “wise mother and good wife,” and the German notion of the “raven mother.” Special attention is paid to the way in which mothering is negotiated and experienced by migrant mothers in gendered family roles over the time—the period from childhood to adulthood—spent in the host country. Various practices and strategies for childcare arrangements and education in sustaining a migrant family in the host country are discussed. Another salient question to explore is the manner in which the migrants’ ethnic culture and values inform their ethno-specific mothering practices. In this respect, the demands and aspirations of cross-cultural mothering to raise children with dual-cultural competence in both the culture of origin and that of destination are explored