Negotiating daughterhood and strangerhood: Retrospective accounts of serial migration

Abstract

Most considerations of daughtering and mothering take for granted that the subjectivities of mothers and daughters are negotiated in contexts of physical proximity throughout daughters'childhoods. Yet many mothers and daughters spend periods separated from each other, sometimes across national borders. Globally, an increasing number of children experience life in transnational families. This paper examines the retrospective narratives of four women who were serial migrants as children (whose parents migrated before they did) . It focuses on their accounts of the reunion with their mothers and how these fit with the ways in which they construct their motherdaughter relationships. We take a psychosocial approach by using a psychoanalyticallyinformed reading of these narratives to acknowledge the complexities of the attachments produced in the context of migration and to attend to the multi-layered psychodynamics of the resulting relationships. The paper argues that serial migration positioned many of the daughters in a conflictual emotional landscape from which they had to negotiate 'strangerhood' in the context of sadness at leaving people to whom they were attached in order to join their mothers (or parents). As a result, many were resistant to being positioned as daughters, doing daughtering and being mothered in their new homes.

“He crecido aquí, es diferente”. Experiencias y trayectorias vitales de los/as descendientes de migrantes chinos en España

“…A lo largo de la última década, desde la academia se ha subrayado la necesidad de superar la perspectiva adulto-céntrica que domina el estudio de las migraciones y redirigir el foco hacia los/as menores de edad y sus experiencias (Gardner, 2012;Ni Laoire, 2011;White et al, 2011;Dobson, 2009). Ello conlleva incorporar sus voces y puntos de vista en tiempo presente, pero también en retrospectiva (Phoenix y Seu, 2013;Phoenix y Bauer, 2012;Olwig, 1999), permitiendo así incorporar una perspectiva de curso vital que evite focalizar en momentos o etapas específicas y abogar así por una visión de sus realidades más coherente y menos fragmentada.…”

Parenting in exile: Narratives of evolving parenting practices in transnational contact zones

“…They call for researchers to “explain the variation in the way that migrants manage that pivot and how host country incorporation and homeland or other transnational ties mutually influence each other” (p. 1011). In the field of migration research, the concept is mostly used to describe physical movement back and forth across borders (Carling & Erdal, 2014; Phoenix & Seu, 2013). Most of the participants in the present study have made—geographically speaking—more complex moves than from A to B, but only a few currently practised a back-and-forth pattern.…”

The critical temporalities of serial migration and family social reproduction in Southeast Asia

“…In the North American context where ‘immigration and settlement’ and ‘family reunification’ are part of the conventional aspirations (though not necessarily grounded reality) shaping migration regimes, ‘serial migration’ usually refers to family migration strategies ‘where one family member immigrates first and then brings the rest of the family at a later time’ (Cervantes et al, 2010: 275). This line of work is usually interested in the effects of immigration-imposed separations on the health and well-being of left-behind family members, as well as on family reunion, adaptation and parent-child/sibling relationships in the immigrant country of settlement (Smith, 2014; Phoenix and Bauer, 2012; Phoenix and Seu, 2013; Phoenix, 2019).…”