The Migrant Maternal: Birthing New Lives Abroad

Schultes Anna Kuroczycka

• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781772580938
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited volume explores how and why immigrant/refugee mothers' experiences differ due to the challenges posed by the migration process, but also what commonalities underline immigrant/refugee mothers' lived experiences. This book will add to the field of women's studies the much-needed discussion of how immigrant and refugee mothers' lives are dependent on cultural, environmental and socio-economic circumstances. The collection offers multiple perspectives on migrant mothering by including ethnographic and theoretical submissions along with mothers' personal narratives and literary analyses from diverse locales: New Zealand, Japan, Canada, The United States, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands among others. The first section of the volume focuses on mothers' roles in the family institution and the pressures and responsibilities they face in "creating" and "reproducing" families physically and socially. The second section shifts its attention to children and highlights mothers' continued roles in the development of their children abroad, along with the gendered/generational dynamics in the settlement process and the resultant effects on motherhood responsibilities. In all chapters, readers will find how women negotiate their traditional roles in a new sociocultural milieu, and how mothering processes are critical in creating connections with traditions and homelands.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I. MOTHERING IN A FOREIGN LAND I
• 1. Reproducing Punjabiyat
• 2. From Mama Africa to Papatūānuku:1
• 3. Mother Tongue as the Language of Mothering and Homing Practice in Betty Quan’s Mother Tongue and Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms
• 4. Perinatal Care for Immigrants in the Netherlands
• 5. Motherhood and Unemployment
• 6. Mothering at the Margins of Health
• 7. Changing Places, Changing Bodies
• I. MOTHERING IN A FOREIGN LAND II
• 8. An Immigrant Mother’s “Revolt against Silence” in Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying
• 9. Isolation and Negotiation
• 10. Foreign Mothers, Native Children
• 11. Mothering Duties Come First
• 12. The Extraordinariness of Ordinary Immigrant Mothers in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Writings
• 13. Attaining a Balance between Showing Sensitivity to Local Norms and Upholding the Values of the Country of Origin
• 14. Intercultural Upbringing
• Conclusion
• About the Contributors