Migrant Mothers Research Articles

The Flavours of Migration: Mother-Daughter Culinary Experiences in Preethi Nair’s 100 Shades of White

The concept of resilience in diasporic contexts emphasises how individuals and groups deploy cultural traditions and adaptive tactics to confront hurdles and retain their identities in the backdrop of relocation. Masten underscores the power of endurance in adjusting to notable challenges. In a transnational environment, food functions as an important emblem of resilience, where it connects diasporic individuals to their cultural roots and promises a sense of continuity in a landscape of displacement. This paper primarily explores migrant mothers and their daughters’ culinary attitudes towards traditional foods in diasporic settings, focusing on the mother-daughter conflict in Preethi Nair's 100 Shades of White. Our analysis is guided by Masten’s notion of resilience and McCartney and Gill’s framework of Cultural Freeze, Convergence, and Compromise/Adaptation, offering novel perspectives in investigating Nalini and her daughter Maya’s interactions with traditional cuisines across cultural and geographic divides, addressing a lacuna in British South Asian women's literature. The novel compellingly displays the power of embracing forgiveness in culinary practices enabling the protagonists to incorporate English ingredients and habits, thus facilitating their assimilation into unfamiliar life in Britain. This paper endeavours to uncover how migrant mothers' and daughters’ food attitudes endure, adapt, and achieve equilibrium that values both their cultural traditions and the unique culinary traditions they find in foreign settings.

Contesting parenting expertise: Constructing good mothering and searching for dignity in Cameroonian Berlin

AbstractParenting is socially constructed via interpersonal encounters, experiences, and narratives circulated among parenting interlocutors who act simultaneously as experts in and audiences for parenting practices. This contribution addresses the changing and contested nature of parenting expertise in Cameroonian Berlin, exploring how kin, friends, and pedagogical, social service, and medical personnel construct contrasting views of what “good” parenting is and whose expertise counts. Immigrant mothers who arrived in the early 2000s developed expertise and then became community‐based experts, advising subsequent immigrants on how to manage officials who hold power to define good parenting in the German context, to praise or insult migrant mothers, and even to remove custody rights. The content and sources of parenting advice, its modes of transmission, and its audiences have changed over the past quarter‐century in response to the increasing size and heterogeneity of the Cameroonian diasporic community, and new technologies for communicating advice. Immigrant mothers’ parenting advice remains focused on biomedical care, emotional regulation, and academic readiness, aimed at producing middle‐class selves and achieving dignity and respect in an environment that so often denigrates Black women “foreigners” and their German‐born children. Women who develop a reputation for mothering expertise undergo self‐realization, crucial in Cameroonian immigrants’ search for dignity.

Development and Validation of the Polymedia Compensation Scale for Left‐Behind Children in Migrant Families

ABSTRACTLeft‐behind children (LBC) in China, whose parents migrate to urban areas for employment, face unique challenges in maintaining parent–child relationships. This study investigates how LBC utilise polymedia to compensate for physical parental absence and examines its association with parent–child attachment. Through exploratory factor analysis of data collected from 549 LBC in Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, we developed a Polymedia Compensation Scale comprising three dimensions: parental accessibility, parental engagement and perceived consolation. The scale structure was subsequently validated using a separate sample (N = 563), demonstrating robust psychometric properties. Analysis revealed that polymedia compensation experiences were significantly higher among younger LBC, LBC with migrant mothers and LBC reporting secure parent–child attachment. These findings contribute to our understanding of how digital communication technologies mediate parent–child relationships in the context of internal migration.

Intensification of traditional mothering ideals in migration contexts: low-income Mainland Chinese cross-border mothers in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Research on migration and mothering has primarily focused on how migration reframes motherhood. Mothers are expected to be the primary caregivers and prioritise their children’s wellbeing over their own. However, transnational mothers face tensions between this conventional ideal and migration realities. Most research has concentrated on the strategies of migrating mothers in resolving these tensions. This study, however, reveals that not all migrant mothers could renegotiate ‘good mothering’ to counter traditional ideals. The authors conducted individual in-depth interviews with 26 low-income cross-border Chinese mothers coming from Mainland China to Hong Kong. The study found that they reinforced and intensified traditional mothering ideals and struggled to meet such moral expectations because their visa status did not allow employment and access to Hong Kong’s social security system. Mothers subordinated their own needs and wellbeing to prioritise their children’s. They blamed themselves for not being able to care for their family in Mainland China. They also needed to rebuild social networks in Hong Kong centred around their children’s needs. The findings suggest that migrant mothers’ agency to redefine motherhood in a transnational context is limited by the intersection of their social class and citizenship status.

The experience of migrant mothers of African origin in Spain: A human rights-based approach to mental health.

Migrant mothers of African origin (MMAO) face multiple situations of vulnerability in receiving societies, with implications for their right to the highest level of mental health. This study examines the intersecting social determinants that shape the experiences of suffering and well-being expressed by MMAO engaged in transnational motherhood in southern Spain. Sixteen MMAO users of the Spanish Red Cross participated in individual interviews and photovoice-based group sessions. The qualitative results show the existence of an interconnected web of six key human rights that are often violated, which impact the mental health of the MMAO. Specifically, MMAO frequently refer to their rights to (a) legal status, (b) access to decent work, (c) family reunification with their children, (d) enjoying supportive social networks in terms of transnational relationships as well as relationships with other MMAO in the receiving society, (e) maintaining their cultural and spiritual roots, and (f) self-determination as a way to ensure their mental health. This proposal contributes to the literature by offering a human rights-based approach to the mental health of a population that is particularly sensitive to the intersectionality of oppression and by offering recommendations for ensuring the right to the mental health of MMAO in receiving societies.

“Doing family” from the standpoint of single Filipina migrant mothers

I aim to center the standpoint of single Filipina mothers engaged in migrant domestic work, a demographic largely decentered in the literature on family and migration. Specifically, I examine how they “do family” from a distance using feminist standpoint theory and culturally sensitive Filipino indigenous methodologies: pakikilahok (close participation) and pakikipagkwentuhan (exchange of stories). My findings reveal that while the experiences of my interlocutors echo general themes in transnational motherhood, they also face unique challenges: juggling the dual roles of financial and care provider, a heightened imperative to work overseas coupled with the pressure of sole responsibility for their children, additional logistical hurdles in coordinating care overseas through female relatives, and navigating their employment context without the emotional and financial support of a partner. I also find that engaging in paid care work in Singapore and performing mediated and unpaid care work in the Philippines do not necessarily operate under a zero-sum dynamic, as these roles are interconnected and can coexist. Finally, in this study, I do not only document single Filipina migrant mothers’ struggles and strategies in “doing family”; I also attempt to contribute to highlighting their voices and aiding in the pursuit of epistemic justice.

The lived experience of migrant Syrian mothers’ interaction with the neonatal screening program

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of migrant Syrian mothers regarding the neonatal screening programs (NSP) using in-depth interviews.MethodsWomen were selected from the Migrant Health Center (MHC), which is the primary health care institution in Istanbul. A translator who spoke Arabic, the native language of participants, used an open-ended, semi-structed interview form to guide face-to-face interviews with participants. Questions were about sociodemographic information, opinions about NSP’s heel prick testing, diseases the test screens for, reasons for agreeing to the heel prick test, and challenges faced accessing health care services. The interviews were audio recorded. The translator then transcribed the audio recordings in Arabic and translated them into Turkish. The framework method for analysis of qualitative data was used to analyze transcripts of the interviews.ResultsForty-one migrant women were interviewed. Four themes were identified from analysis of transcripts of the interviews, regarding (1) knowledge of the NSP, (2) attitudes about the NSP, (3) practices that create barriers to accessing health care services, (4) practices to overcome barriers to accessing health care services. Most participants had no knowledge of the diseases the NSP tests for. A few participants had heard of congenital hypothyroidism (CH), congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), but they were not aware of the symptoms and effects of these diseases. Some participants thought the heel prick test benefited their child’s health as it enables early diagnosis and treatment of diseases. All participants agree to heal prick testing after the birth of their most recent child. Participants noted the information and recommendations health care professionals provided influenced their decision to agree to the heel prick test. Most participants experienced language barriers when accessing health care services.ConclusionsMigrant women expressed a positive attitude toward the NSP. Future health care interventions regarding migrants should aim to reduce the negative experiences they encounter accessing health care, such as language barriers.

Mothering (un)belonging: Politics of care in the new wave of Turkish outmigration

A new wave of migrants has been leaving Turkey in increasing numbers. This wave has multiple, intersecting master narratives: brain drain, flight, and lifestyle migration. A less visible characteristic is that many migrant women have been coming together under the banner of motherhood on social media. Based on semi-structured interviews with 36 migrant mothers, this article illustrates how this new wave of migrants also needs to be viewed in light of the contemporary politics of the family in the country. I examine how women’s socially determined reproductive responsibilities inform their migration motivations as well as experiences. Migration leads to a re-distribution of care responsibilities between the state, the market and the family, which transforms women’s experience of reproductive in/security. However, achieving the actual promise of reproductive security requires new struggles against the threat of ethnicization and transformations in class identity in destination countries. This article focuses on education as an area of state-family relations, where the re-distribution of care responsibilities most impacted women’s sense of reproductive security and belonging. Such a reading of the new wave of migrants highlights how care relations constitute a site of intersectional belonging at both ends of the migration journey and thus contributes to the growing literature on migrant mothering.

Book Review: Forced Out: Migrant Mothers in Search of Refuge and Hope Susan J Terrio

Book Review: Forced Out: Migrant Mothers in Search of Refuge and Hope <i>Susan J Terrio</i>

Between affection and control: Chinese migrant mothers’ motherhood practices based on the mediated one-dimensional visibility of home cameras

Home surveillance cameras provide new ways for Chinese migrant mothers to provide such care. Existing research on migrant women’s motherhood focuses mainly on two-way communication technologies represented by mobile text messages and phone calls, without discussing individual surveillance technologies and their compatibility and contradictions with long-distance motherhood. This study will define visibility based on home cameras as mediated one-dimensional visibility and ask what role home cameras, as a surveillance technology, have played in the remote performance of mothering by female migrant workers in China and what kind of mothering practices they have given rise to. The findings show that the one-dimensional visibility provided by home cameras alleviates the anxieties of migrant mothers regarding the lack of intimacy and supervised education due to the features of being able to watch at any time without having to answer and secretive gazing. With this one-dimensional visibility, migrant mothers can watch their children from a distance and provide behavioral interventions and control. However, these interventions can both promote and diminish intimacy. When the two are in conflict, migrant mothers prioritize maintaining intimate relationships, which can have an impact on their children’s growth. This enriches our understanding of mediated motherhood.

Self or children? Navigating intensive mothering ideology and maternal agency for rural-to-urban migrant working mothers in China

ABSTRACT The prevalent norm of motherhood in contemporary societies is intensive mothering, which is child-centred. As a result, mothers are characterized positively only when they sacrifice unconditionally for their children. Chinese rural-to-urban migrant working mothers (RUMWMs) are low-class working mothers who must relocate for higher wages because of their living circumstances and are forced to leave their children behind. This leads to difficulty in achieving the ideal image of a good mother. This article draws on in-depth interviews with 31 RUMWMs in China to examine whether their responses to the ideology of intensive mothering (in both thoughts and actions) are self-focused or child-oriented. The findings suggest that these mothers’ tactics fit into one of four categories. Most of the mothers’ responses demonstrate their maternal agency as they boldly redefine competent mothering in their own ways. This article provides an agency-oriented perspective on how lower-class mothers redefine or negotiate the dominant mainstream intensive mothering ideology.

Child fostering and maternal migration in sub-Saharan Africa

Rising feminization of migration has resulted in substantial flows of women migrating in Africa, increasing the importance of migration in women’s lives. Although child fostering is an enduring feature of family life throughout Africa, few studies have examined the role that maternal migration may play in these arrangements. I use Demographic and Health Survey data from 24 African countries to explore associations between maternal migration experience and fostering out of children aged 0–17, focusing on maternal migrant status, migrant stream, motivation, and timing of migration relative to births of children, to explore potential disruption introduced by migration. Results suggest that maternal migration disrupts mother–child co-residence, with greater fostering among children of migrant mothers, particularly rural–urban migrants. Children born before migration display the highest probability of fostering, consistently across migrant streams. These results suggest a need for greater attention to the impacts of maternal migration for children’s living arrangements, particularly as migration flows become increasingly feminized.

Effect of postpartum depression, anxiety and social support on maternal self-efficacy: comparing undocumented migrant, documented migrant and Swiss-born mothers.

Postpartum depression and anxiety negatively affect maternal sense of self-efficacy, which may jeopardize mother-infant bonding. Migrant women are at two to three times higher risk for postpartum depression and anxiety. Therefore, they may experience lower maternal self-efficacy, but studies on the subject are lacking. The aims of this study were (1) to compare two groups of economic migrants of differing legal status in Geneva, Switzerland, to native Swiss women in terms of postpartum depression and anxiety rates, as well as maternal sense of self-efficacy, and (2) to examine the effects of postpartum depression, anxiety, and social support on maternal self-efficacy in the three groups. A sample of 25 undocumented migrant women, 42 documented migrant women, and 41 Swiss women were interviewed at 3 months postpartum. Depression was assessed with the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale and anxiety with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Maternal self-efficacy was assessed with the Maternal Self-Efficacy Scale. ANOVAs and multiple regression analysis were used to test mean-level differences among the three groups and identify factors associated with low maternal self-efficacy. Legal status was associated with living conditions and influenced the rates of postpartum distress. Swiss women and documented migrant women showed low depression and anxiety rates, whereas nearly half of the sample of undocumented women reported high levels of postpartum depression and anxiety. However, despite poor postpartum mental health, undocumented women showed a higher sense of maternal self-efficacy than did documented migrants and Swiss natives. The relationship between postpartum depression, maternal self-efficacy, social support, and legal status is discussed.

Mamá Empoderada: study protocol for a pilot trial of a novel parenting and mental health prevention intervention for migrant mothers with young children at the Mexico-US border

IntroductionMigrant women in transit face high risk of developing mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, driven by gendered social-structural factors including violence, social isolation, migration uncertainty, limited access...

Dalla fragilità sociale alla resilienza: il metodo autobiografico per una genitorialità responsiva

For a healthy cognitive and emotional development of their children, it is essential that parents exercise a parental responsiveness, oriented to respond adequately to their educational needs. Unfortunately, parental function can be compromised by social and existential fragility, as in the case of vulnerable mothers such as migrant mothers, prisoners, and victims of violence. The autobiographical method is an effective tool for formation that allows us to reimagine life events and reconstruct existential fragility, trigger resilience processes, and involve mothers and children in reactive parental responsiveness dynamics.

Linguistic Choices as Political Participation: The Political Voice of Ukrainian Refugee and Migrant Mothers

ABSTRACT While political participation today manifests in many new, creative, and individualized forms, the contextual drivers and implications of lifestyle politics remain underexplored. This paper offers a comprehensive framework for the study of lifestyle politics, and examines deeply intimate private-life decisions that acquire political meaning during times of conflict. It leverages 18 unique in-depth interviews with Ukrainian refugee and migrant mothers in Denmark to investigate the political nature of linguistic choices, particularly the shift from Russian to Ukrainian after the invasion. Findings show that choosing to speak Ukrainian over Russian and avoiding Russian-language cultural products demonstrates solidarity and protest. Mothers’ policing of language and popular culture at home illustrates how language politicization blurs the line between private and public life and facilitates intergenerational transmission of lifestyle politics. These findings reveal the pervasiveness of and overlooked barriers and sacrifices to this form of political participation, offering insights that are relevant beyond the Ukrainian context.

Why do Rural Migrant Mothers in Urban China Digitally Monitor Their Children?

We examine how and why some rural intra-provincial working migrant women in cities in central China used digital monitoring technologies in their mothering. The discussion draws on our 22 face-to-face interviews with the rural migrant mothers of at least one child ages 7–14 years. Our analysis highlights the intersectionally constituted time pressures arising from these women’s need to balance their responsibilities in paid work and childcare. We focus on how some of the mothers used smartwatches and home security cameras to pursue three core aspects of intensive mothering: being continually accessible to their children, supervising their children’s safety and well-being, and encouraging their children to study. We especially explore how these mothers used digital monitoring in navigating the time and space constraints to providing maternal care, practices that we call “time stretching.” The conclusion reflects on the implications of these women’s digital time-stretching efforts for feminist theories of mothering and care.

Blurred lines of participation: nexus analytical tools for reflecting on the roles of researchers and participants in change-oriented research projects

Abstract This article discusses nexus analysis (NA) as a research strategy that provides specific tools for reflecting on the roles of researchers and participants in participatory research. While many research traditions use participatory methods and problematise what it means to participate in research, thus far the potential of nexus analytical concepts as tools to mediate such a reflection has not been discussed explicitly. In order to illustrate how NA promotes such reflections, we draw on four linguistic projects in multilingual settings that deal with (1) preservice teachers’ learning to design for language learning in hybrid environments on a university course, (2) plurilingual and collaborative teaching approaches to writing in language classrooms in secondary schools, (3) language socialisation of migrant mothers, and (4) family language policy in single-parent families. With this article, we demonstrate how the nexus analytical conceptual tools of ‘zone of identification’, ‘historical body’ and ‘interaction order’ facilitate reflection upon the researcher’s participatory engagement in various stages of the research process. We show that the lines between the roles of researchers and participants are blurry, in particular in research projects that focus on introducing social change. Additionally, we highlight the importance of reflecting on power relations between researchers and participants and how control over project direction and decisions can impact the representation and involvement of community members.

The Migrant Mother’s Silence in Her Mother Tongue as a Mothering Strategy

Abstract Historically silenced, literary mothers’ voices are finally now being given their due, but it is noteworthy that migrant mothers’ literary voices are yet to be fully heard. This essay focuses on literary representations of migrant mothers who refuse to speak their own mother tongue to their children. It looks at two texts by women writers originating directly or indirectly from two post-Soviet Baltic states, Estonia and Lithuania. The texts in question are the novel Stalinin lehmät (Stalin’s Cows) (2003) by Sofi Oksanen and the essay “Motinų tylėjimas” (“The Silence of the Mothers”) (2004) by Dalia Staponkutė. Drawing on postcolonial theory, memory studies, and transnational feminist theory, I suggest that the migrant mother’s silence in her own mother tongue connotes several unarticulated realities: the trauma of colonization, the negotiation of post-Soviet migrant femininity, and patriarchal gender regimes. I argue that the migrant mothers represented in both texts withhold their mother tongue as a mothering strategy designed to socialize their children to successfully negotiate the transnational, multilingual spaces they will navigate as adults.

Exploring Migrant Mothers' Utilisation of Oral Health-Related Information: A Qualitative Interview Study in the Swedish Context.

To explore, as a part of oral health literacy conceptual content, how migrant mothers utilise oral health-related information to maintain and promote oral health in their children. In-depth interviews were conducted with seven migrant mothers of children up to 10 years old resettled in Kalmar County, Sweden. The mothers had entered Sweden from 2015 onwards, and their native language was Somalian, Dari or Arabic. The participants were encouraged to describe their experiences seeking oral health information and oral health in general and dental health services. The interviews were analysed by qualitative content analysis with coding in categories, followed by formulating a main category. The findings revealed a main category-combining different ways of information utilisation. The main category captures the essence of the migrant mothers' various ways of using oral health-related information in the Swedish context to maintain and promote oral health in their children. The main category draws upon four sub-categories that emerged from the analysis: cognitive processing, decision-making competencies, adapting to social norms and practical application. The results provide an important insight into migrant mothers' approach to utilisation of oral health-related information. This approach distinguished being rational and making logical connections, believing in their capacity to know what is right for their children and acting based on these beliefs, as well as adapting to prevailing social norms and applying information in specific use. This knowledge can be used to support parental oral health actions and conduct further research in this area.