Migrant African Women Research Articles

Everyday racism and the denial of migrant African women’s good caring in aged care work

AbstractThere is, in the global north, a “care crisis,” a shortfall in the capacity to provide care for an aging population. Migrant care workers have been positioned as a solution to this crisis, but this positioning sits in tension with research highlighting the widespread racism that questions or denies the skills and commitment of migrant care workers. This study draws on the experiences of 30 migrant African women working in the Australian aged care sector to interrogate the implications of this tension. The authors describe how everyday racism perpetrated by clients and colleagues denied the possibility that migrant African women carers were able or welcome to undertake “good caring.” Applying Tronto's conceptualization of caring as relational, the authors argue that everyday racism symbolically denies African migrant women's participation in key phases of the caring process: “caring about,” “caregiving,” and “care‐receiving.” Everyday racism thus rejects migrant African women's care work at the individual level and reinforces care as a set of practices and dispositions that are unavailable to them.

Unsettled Subjects: Sex Work in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

This paper advocates that a reading of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street must expressly engage the writer’s ambivalence about migration for sex work. The reading approaches OBSS from an angle which concedes the tensions in Unigwe’s depiction of her female characters’ lives between constraint and comfort, violence and possibility. This (re)negotiates the mobile spaces and affective labours of interpretation, sometimes facing obstacles, and at others managing to clear a provisional passage towards ideas that are present in the text, but with less obviousness than others. The discussion notes elements of intersecting identity for the writer and her female protagonists as black immigrants in a predominantly white European space (Belgium), positions which constantly enjoin them to (re)negotiate their respective roles as migrant African women. Acknowledging abuses against her black female sex worker characters while at the same time giving them an emphatic sense of worth, Unigwe humanizes her female protagonists, inviting readers to respond to the women’s moving circumstances, rather than pre-judge them according to their profession. The novel ‘produces vexed implications’ instead of being able to be ‘read as rigidly determinate’ (Omelsky 94). Unigwe undercuts the limitation of telling a ‘single story’ about African female migrants who are sex workers in Antwerp, imagining the complicated delineations of their subjection and agency.

Approach towards female African migrant entrepreneurship research

This paper sets out my rationale and objective, the motivating factors, methodology, types of data collection and analysis. The purpose of the research is to investigate and analyse the entrepreneurial experiences of Migrant African Women Entrepreneurs (MAWEs) in Regional Queensland whose businesses depend on tourism. This study is inspired by my personal experience as a migrant African woman and informed by my doctoral study in progress. Having migrated from Africa to Australia seven years ago, I noted numerous aspiring entrepreneurs among migrant African women and developed an interest in learning more about the experiences of this group, and a concern regarding the extent of their needs. The objectives are to explore MAWEs' motivation, identify the factors that enable them, the barriers they encounter and the challenges they face. This will involve excavating the role of formal and informal learning practices. Tenets of feminist theory are used to examine opportunities for formal adult education, peer-to-peer learning, and work experience that facilitates the establishment and sustainability of small business. As an insider, I can provide insights and give the participants a voice by articulating their observation and encouraging the growth of small business which contributes to the economy of regional Australia.

Barriers and challenges experienced by migrant African women entrepreneurs in North Queensland, Australia

The purpose of this study is to explore and identify possible barriers and challenges experienced by migrant African women entrepreneurs in the establishment and operation of their businesses in North Queensland. The study adopts a qualitative approach and employs in-depth, semi-structured interviews and site visits to participants businesses. Findings revealed that cultural factors, family, human capital, social capital and networks, and institutional factors potentially acted as barriers to the establishment and operation and of their businesses. This is a small-scale pilot study. The data was gathered from eleven migrant African women only, in a specific region, so the results are limited in applicability and cannot be assumed to apply to other cultures. The context of the research might not be considered a representative of Australia. This study provides empirical data regarding the barriers and challenges encountered by migrant women entrepreneurs and contributes to a new body of knowledge, providing a foundation for further research in this area. The study also serves to inform policymakers.

A qualitative study of developing beliefs about health, illness and healthcare in migrant African women with gestational diabetes living in Sweden

BackgroundGestational diabetes (GDM) is associated with health risks for both mother and child, and is particularly relevant to migrant women and women of African origin. With today’s extensive global migration, contact with the new society and health system confronts the migrant’s culture of origin with the culture of the host country. The question is whether immigrants’ patterns of beliefs about health, illness, and health-related behaviour change over time, as no previous studies have been found on this topic. The purpose was to explore development over time, during and after pregnancy, of beliefs about health, illness and healthcare in migrant women with GDM born in Africa living in Sweden, and study the influence on self-care and care seeking.MethodsQualitative prospective study. Semi-structured interviews, with 9 women (23–40 years), on three different occasions: during pregnancy (gestational weeks 34–38), and 3 and 14 months after delivery managed at an in-hospital diabetes specialist clinic in Sweden.ResultsBeliefs were rather stable over time and mainly related to individual and social factors. GDM was perceived as a transient condition as health professionals had informed about it, which made them calm. None, except one, expressed worries about relapse and the health of the baby. Instead women worried about being unable to live an ordinary life and being bound to lifestyle changes, particularly diet, developing diabetes and needing insulin injections. Over time knowledge of appropriate diet improved, although no advice was experienced given by the clinic after delivery. The healthcare model was perceived as well functioning with easy access but regular follow-ups were requested as many (decreasing over time) were unsure whether they still had GDM and lacked information about GDM and diet. During pregnancy information was also requested about the healthcare system before/after delivery.ConclusionsBeliefs changed to a limited extent prospectively, indicated low risk awareness, limited knowledge of GDM, irrelevant worries about future health, and being unable to live a normal life, associated with problematic lifestyle changes. Beliefs about the seriousness of GDM in health professionals influenced patients’ beliefs and health-related behaviour. The healthcare organisation urgently needs to be improved to deliver appropriate and timely information through competent staff.

Migration and Identities in Chika Unigwe’s Novels

Monumental dispersals caused by the phenomenon of migration greatly affect the identities of people. Much like the process of globalization, migration is highly sexualized and gendered. To this extent, it is necessary to centralize women and their peculiar experiences in migration discourses and theories. Beyond the usual focus on the economics, politics and sociology of migration, which at any rate do not often adequately address gender-specific migratory experiences; this study takes a literary route that considers the fictional representations of migrant women in two of the novels of Chika Unigwe: The Phoenix (2005) and On Black Sisters’ Street (2008). The focus here is to underscore the validity and significance of gender as an imperative analytical premise in contemporary literary debates particularly by African migrants. In demonstrating how the inflections of gender portend different outcomes for men and women, the study significantly uncovers how the woman’s body is simultaneously the site of physical and symbolic migration. The essay traces the movement in transition and the impact of these and new environment on the bodies of female migrants and how the embodied motifs of migration ultimately alter the identities and realities of migrant African women in particular. In all, the essay hopes to expand some of the current theorizations on the new directions in the development of the fictional representations of Nigerian women as well as to contextualize the role of the emigre author in these developments.

Claude Simon: situations éd. par Paul Dirkx, Pascal Mougin

postnationalism with critics who dispute its representation of the postcolonial subject as “an uprooted, deterritorialized, unfettered, and free-floating migrant” (xiii). Interestingly, gender is the paradigm that underscores the novelty of her analysis, which dwells on Francophone African migrant literatures. The book breaks new ground by deconstructing previous readings of nationalism that ignore the gender paradigm, and by correlating this oversight to their celebration of postnationalism. Engaging three migrant women writers, Coly notes the continuity between“the gender politics of anticolonial nationalism” and those of male/female postcolonial postnationalist narratives (xxv). Her subsequent analysis of postindependent home and belonging as elusive, exclusivist, inviting, and too heteropatriarchal for migrant African women is refreshing. The critic reveals the connected experiences of Calixthe Beyala, Ken Bugul, and Fatou Diome in Africa and Europe. Dealing with Bugul’s novels, the first and second chapters address the female migrant’s experience of the nation and Europe as a non-place and question the reintegration of home and the impact of homesickness on the narrative of homecoming respectively. The relevancy of the nation for women depicted by Beyala is the focus of chapter 3 where Coly correlates the dissident and culturally violent space-clearing gesture of the lesbian desire and their exclusion by the postcolonial/heteropatriarchal nation. If affiliation is positively read as women’s alternative means to attain home, Beyala’s transnationalism is less so, given her obsessive French tropism. In fact, chapter 4 echoes Coly’s critique of Beyala’s Belleville novels as “colonialist narratives of Africa” (71) and addresses the politics of interracial marriage and prostitution as pathways into the French house. Coly also notes how women create contact and appropriate space in France (ch. 5). The final chapters unveil the negative effects of colonial globalization on Senegal and the relevance of the nation, which appear through Diome’s demystification of France and reinstatement of her homeland.Coly ultimately relates identification with the hostland, homeland, and homecoming to gender politics and social status. It features Diome and Beyala’s contrasted depictions of the African woman and the treatment of her body in France. In articulating a bold challenge of the preeminence of the migrant through a concise reading that significantly correlates African women, migration, and nation, Coly refers repeatedly to the ‘nervous condition,’ which informs the trio’s oftentimes ambiguous narrative of home. However, discussing this trope separately would have added valuable substance to this theoretically sound work. Colby College (ME) Mouhamedoul A. Niang Dirkx, Paul, et Pascal Mougin, éd. Claude Simon: situations. Lyon: ENS, 2011. ISBN 978-2-84788-302-2. Pp. 203. 23 a. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1985; added to the required reading for the agrégation in 1997–98; since 2000 Simon has attracted more critical interest than 220 FRENCH REVIEW 88.1 Reviews 221 any French novelist except Proust. In this volume, eleven scholars discuss how Simon’s fictions enfold the personal—autobiography, dwellings, family, and history—without being dominated or shaped by it. He is neither dependent on real-world referents, nor scornful of them like his contemporaries the New Novelists. Simon’s configurations of referents are systemic but not systematic; and he may eliminate toponymics. His Nobel acceptance speech explains that for him the work of writing produces meaning. The newness created by this work is the adventure of writing. Musical metaphors explain his art. His novels resemble the compositions by those classical and jazz musicians who combine citation with transformation.As a writer,he feels an affinity with artisans and their ethos of craftsmanship. Alternatively, he supports or denies the ideal that living with literature can improve humans. He consistently resists the tyranny of aesthetic norms (preached by the New Novelists, particularly Jean Ricardou), as well as the moralistic imperatives of the Existentialists’ littérature engagée. In this volume, the most informative starting point for non-specialists would be Pascal Mougin’s “La mésalliance parentale” (41–52). Simon’s father was a navy captain, a son of peasants, who proved himself and earned advancement through the discipline of enduring harsh climates and facing dangers, deferring the gratification of rewards. His mother came from an aristocratic family of wealthy landowners that...

‘The barriers that only you can see’: African Australian women thriving in tertiary education despite the odds

This qualitative study argues the need to recognise the increasing numbers of new African women migrants who have come to Australia with tertiary qualifications, but who are not necessarily refugees. These women are enrolling in and successfully completing university study. At the same time, the study makes clear the limits of conceptualising African Australian women’s experiences of education through a singular focus on struggle, disengagement and non-belonging. Rather, African Australian women’s enrolment in higher education needs to be seen as enabling new forms of participation and belonging in resettlement, while simultaneously impacting in multiple and sometimes personally challenging ways on the women’s more traditional cultural roles and identities. The article finishes by recognising that universities and other educational institutions can play a more active role in supporting migrant African women to thrive in tertiary educational contexts.

Migrant African women: tales of agency and belonging

This paper explores issues of belonging and agency among asylum seekers and refugee women of African origin in the UK. It discusses the ways these women engendered resistance in their everyday life to destitution, lack of cultural recognition, and gender inequality through the foundation of their own non-governmental organization, African Women's Empowerment Forum, AWEF, a collective ‘home’ space. The focus of this account is on migrant women's agency and self-determination for the exercise of choice to be active actors in society. It points to what might be an important phenomenon on how local grassroots movements are challenging the invisibility of asylum seekers’ and refugees’ lives and expanding the notion of politics to embrace a wider notion of community politics with solidarity. AWEF is the embodiment of a social space that resonates the ‘in-between’ experience of migrant life providing stability to the women members regarding political and community identification.

Estimation of the 25(OH) Vitamin D Threshold below which Secondary Hyperparathyroidism may Occur Among African Migrant Women in Paris

It has previously been shown that there is a threshold of serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D below which secondary hyperparathyroidism may occur. Our purpose was to estimate this threshold in a population of migrant African women living in Paris. Between February 2008 and December 2009, measurements of 25-hydroxy vitamin D and parathormone were performed in 165 African migrant women living in Paris. The estimation of 25-hydroxy vitamin D and parathormone marginal distributions as Gaussian mixtures, combined with a nonparametric kernel estimation method of the regression function of parathormone on 25-hydroxy vitamin D, provided the desired estimate of serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D threshold. In our sample of African women, our method has shown that serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels below 48 ± 2 nmol/L may induce an increase in parathormone concentrations. In this sample, our method provided a reliable estimate (95 % confidence interval) of the serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D level below which an increase in parathormone concentrations can be observed.

Experiences of African Immigrant Women Living with HIV in the U.K.: Implications for Health Professionals

In the U.K. immigrant women from Africa constitute an increasingly large proportion of newly diagnosed cases of HIV. A significant minority of these are refugees and asylum seekers. Very little is known about their experiences of living with HIV/AIDS, their psychosocial needs or their views of health care provision. This paper reports the results of a qualitative study that explored these issues by interviewing eight African women living with HIV in the British city of Nottingham. Women's ability to live positively with HIV was found to be strongly shaped by their migration history, their legal status, their experience of AIDS-related stigma and their Christian faith. Significantly, health services were represented as a safe social space, and were highly valued as a source of advice and support. The findings indicate that non-judgemental, personalised health care plays a key role in encouraging migrant African women to access psychosocial support and appropriate HIV services.