Navigating the Productive/Reproductive Split: Latin American Transnational Mothers and Fathers in Canada's Temporary Migration Programs

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the experiences of transnational agricultural migrant workers in Canada's guestworker programs. Examined through a gendered lens, it focuses on migrants' experiences as parents to children whom they must leave behind in their communities of origin when they migrate. Drawing on interview and ethnographic data, this article argues that transnational parents, especially mothers, face a unique set of challenges and barriers as participants in these programs. It explores how the injustices in the immigration-labor regime that migrants confront as racialized, non-citizen farm workers impact parents' ability to focus on their primary motivation to migrate—their children—thereby limiting their ability to fulfill idealized forms of motherhood and fatherhood and hindering their parent-child relationships. It also demonstrates that migrant mothers frequently experience increased feelings of self-doubt, guilt and inadequacy as transnational parents, which, in turn, diminishes the benefit...