When a Mother Comes to Life. Care, Childcare and Healthcare Services and Motherhood from Migrant Women's Experiences: An Ethnographic Approach

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bologna and surrounding areas, the paper aims at examining the ways in which some African migrant women develop motherhood in relation to their childbirth and childcare experiences within the Italian society. Specifically, it focuses on their encounters with healthcare services and education institutions (counselling centres, childcare services and schools) by discussing their desires and practices, connecting the origin and the receiving countries, the transformations that mobility produces within (extra) domestic spaces, the daily effects of both public discourses and institutional practices. Going beyond the conventional dichotomies (i.e. tradition vs modernity; public vs private; continuity vs discontinuity), the fieldwork shows migrant mothering as an ambivalent and plural experience and sheds a new light on how migrant women, although located within power hierarchies, challenge the cultural and gender essentialisms that construct them as “silent” and passive victims.

Keywords: gender, motherhood, migrant women, healthcare and educational services.