Abstract
AbstractThis article explores the migration narratives of Southern European parents living in Norway, where family projects emerged as a central theme. Migrant parents told stories not only of disillusionment and sacrifice but also of satisfaction, which they articulated around their aspiration to have a family life after migration. We analysed the informants' storytelling and explored the ways that family aspirations manifested. By articulating their migration experiences through their aspirations to grow their family, the migrant parents claimed a position as subjects in Norwegian discourses on parenting and citizenship and distanced themselves from discourses on labour immigration and immigrant parenting. The article aims to contribute to the scholarship on motivations for post‐2008 intra‐European migration and on narrative legitimation by drawing attention to the way migrants use their family projects as a vehicle for self‐legitimation, for claiming rightful membership to the host society and for justifying this position to themselves and others.
Highlights
My husband and I knew that when it came time to having kids, it was going to be in Norway because we didn't have a real job in Italy
We examined what migrant parents aimed to accomplish with their storytelling about their family aspirations
The migrant parents told stories that reproduced Norwegian discourses on parenting and family life that illuminated the tensions they experience in their attempts to meet their aspirations
Summary
My husband and I knew that when it came time to having kids, it was going to be in Norway because we didn't have a real job in Italy. Afterwards, public childcare is guaranteed and extensively used and available at reasonable prices, and parents who prefer homecare are entitled to a quite generous allowance or tax deduction for expenses related to hiring a babysitter (Isaksen, 2016) These types of public provisions have promoted the representation of Scandinavian countries as a model of family-friendly policy in the Southern European social imaginary (Marí-Klose, Fuentes, & del Pino Matute, 2015). As Isaksen (2016) argued in her study of the meanings that Italian migrant mothers in Norway gave to public welfare services in host and origin countries, the Norwegian market-family-state arrangements seem ideal for this population because it supports their identities as middle-class parents and professionals. These aspirations challenge the notion of ‘liquid migration’ used to define the free intra-European mobility characterised by economic motivations, lifestyles of mobility, increased individualization and temporariness (Engbersen, 2012)
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