This article investigates how minority Muslim parents experience and negotiate parenting, parenthood and citizenship in a context of increasing socio-political tensions. Drawing upon both parenting and parenthood as well as minority citizenship studies, it conceptualises parenthood as a domain for experiences of inand exclusion of belonging to society. Based on an ethnographic study with self-organising Moroccan-Dutch parent groups, analyses show that political discourses contesting migrants' belonging to society as well as disqualifications of minority parenting in parenting discourses and social services enter these families' domestic lives in pervasive ways. As parents engage in socio-political dynamics in public spheres, they ground themselves in migratory, classed, historical, religious and globalised perspectives to express, counter and co-build parenthood and citizenship notions. As such, this study sheds light on how parents affirm their civic contribution to society as a parent, as well as on the civic nature of parenthood. Translating the findings to practice, this article draws attention to minority Muslim families' diverse stances as child-rearing citizens.
Research shows that top‐down‐designed parenting programmes do not always meet the needs of postmigration parents. Bottom‐up programmes by migrant organizations hold a promise to fill this gap; however, research about these programmes and appropriate evaluation methodologies is scarce. Drawing upon Wenger's () “communities of practice,” this paper explores an alternative perspective on parenting programme evaluation. Findings are presented from a study looking into social learning processes of postmigration parents who participated in a bottom‐up programme about raising teenagers in urban areas. Using an ethnographically inspired method combined with a preprogramme and postprogramme design, 115 Moroccan‐Dutch mothers and fathers from 15 programme groups participated. Results show that the programme provided a social learning space in which parents used themselves as resources to learn collectively about parenting. Moreover, parents consciously engaged in learning interactions across learning spaces stretched into their social networks. These analyses showed how parents' development of “learning citizenship” (Wenger, ) provides us with insight in collective learning dimensions present in a bottom‐up parenting programme, which is often not included in evaluation studies. Implications for practitioners as facilitators of parents' collective learning are presented.
Research shows how migration has a profound impact on people’s parenting experiences and practices, as it disrupts and rearranges social contexts, cultural frames of reference and access to socioeconomic status and resources. Next to the challenges this brings forth, studies report how people’s connection to multiple places and communities simultaneously provokes new perspectives and practices. Understanding the complexities and potentials of parenting post migration is important, because as a socializing practice of future generations it is closely interrelated with the functioning and well-being of families and today’s rapidly changing societies. Post Migration Parenthood as Social Site for Learning and Negotiation aims to contribute to new understandings of parenting by investigating parenting from the experiences and perspectives of people participating in a bottom-up organised parenting support programme post migration. Drawing upon a community-based parenting programme evaluation study with fifteen groups of Moroccan-Dutch mothers and fathers in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, this dissertation explores how people experience, perceive and practice parenting post migration, which social processes underly their experiences, perspectives and practices in relation to the social contexts in which they engage and how we can answer these questions in the context of a bottom-up parenting programme evaluation study. By drawing upon multiple perspectives and methodologies – ranging from sociocultural learning theory, migration studies and critical parenthood and citizenship studies to pre- and post-programme structured interviews, in-depth social network interviews and micro-ethnographies - this dissertation offers unique insights. The analyses illustrate respectively how the programme studied provided a social space in which parents used themselves as resources to learn collectively about parenting; how they navigated and negotiated multiple cultural frameworks as part of their post migration context to re-interpret meanings of parenting practices; how they experienced and negotiated parenting, parenthood and citizenship as Muslim minority parents in a context of increasing socio-political tensions; and, at last, how the study showed itself as a provocative and creative social site in which collaboration between participants and researchers was established, de-established and re-established continuously. Taken together, Post Migration Parenthood as Social Site for Learning and Negotiation highlights how exploring bottom-up organised parenting support initiatives as a social context in which people engage post migration, can contribute to understandings of social processes underlying cultural contact and change in the family domain from a non-dominant position in society. Moreover, it shows how studying the outcomes and processes of such programmes can contribute to our knowledge on their under-examined role in the professional field of parenting support, as well as that it expands and enhances our insights concerning evaluation methods of such initiatives. Concluding, it discusses how we can translate the findings to practice in service of healthy and thriving families and societies, by rethinking parents as creative learning resources for one another, practitioners as facilitators of collective exploration, community organisations as resources for refuge and partnership and research collaboration as resource for design negotiation.
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