Introduction: migrant mothers challenging racialized citizenship

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the Special Issue on Migrant Mothers’ Creative Interventions into Racialized Citizenship. It reflects on the theoretical and policy areas to which research on migrant mothers’ citizenship can contribute. The introduction argues that studies on citizenship, racialization, migration are important to theoretical as well as policy debates on contemporary nationhood, multiculturalism, generational and social cohesion as well as austerity and racism and migration. Drawing on our own work, as well as contributions to the Special Issue, the introduction illuminates this with respect to examples from the US, Canada, Portugal and the UK. These issues are relevant to migrants of different statuses including skilled migrants, family migrants, undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. The migrant mothers’ care and cultural work in bringing up their children can be theorized as a creative intervention challenging racialized citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• Mother
• migration
• race
• migration
• citizenship
• care and culture work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Umut Erel http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7853-991X

Tracey Reynolds http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9618-6318

Notes

1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-january-to-march-2016/citizenship#grants-and-refusals-of-citizenship

2. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/parentscountryofbirthenglandandwales/2015#rising-percentage-of-live-births-to-foreign-born-women-in-the-uk)

 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number AH/K00591X/1].