The emotional journey of motherhood in migration. The case of Southern European mothers in Norway

Abstract

Based on focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with Greek, Italian, and Spanish mothers living in Norway, this article contributes to an emerging body of literature on the role of emotions in migration by exploring migrant motherhood as an emotional journey. Drawing on the work of Arlie Hochschild on emotions and her theoretical concepts of framing rules, feeling rules, and emotion work, the article explores how migrant mothers reflect on their emotions when raising their children in the context of migration. Migrant mothers’ accounts illustrate the ambivalent and contradictory emotional experiences they have when they manage rules about how they should make sense of, and feel about their mothering in both host and origin countries. Emotions of guilt, blame, remorse, pride, satisfaction, confidence, and happiness shaped mothers’ experiences of motherhood and social interactions across countries. Through emotion work, migrant mothers managed interdependent emotions and related to different feeling rules establishing and maintaining relationships across places, and negotiating, in this way, their belonging to multiple contexts. Using an emotions-based sociological perspective, we look at motherhood as a field for studying the functions of emotions and their interactions in the context of migration.

Migrant parents’ contributions to students’ negotiations of their educational futures: A case study at a Norwegian high school

“…Among other factors establishing distance, the normative Norwegian value of individual autonomous choices (Gullestad, 1996;Hegna & Smette, 2017;Herrero-Arias et al, 2021) appears to be clearly communicated, at least to migrant families. Some families may not fully accept this value and actively engage in their children's education and choices at home, as demonstrated by Kindt (2018).…”

“…Norway's legal and cultural norms give significant recognition to children's rights to autonomy, particularly in terms of educational choices (Gullestad, 1996;Hegna & Smette, 2017;Vedeler, 2020). Southern European migrant mothers interviewed by Herrero-Arias et al (2021) experienced parenting in Norway as strongly directed toward developing children's self-sufficiency and autonomy. The mothers both appreciated and found it difficult to keep up with Norwegian society's emphasis on engaging in dialogue with children and encouraging decision making and independent learning from an early age.…”

‘The more you go to the mountains, the better parent you are’. Migrant parents in Norway navigating risk discourses in professional advice on family leisure and outdoor play

“…In the analysis presented below we draw on data from a doctoral project that comprised Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and interviews with parents from Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece about a range of aspects of raising their children (Herrero-Arias et al, 2020a, 2020b. Family leisure and outdoor play emerged as key areas of informants' interactions with professionals and, for this article, we extracted and analysed the data related to parents' discussions about this aspect of parental experience.…”

Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ Emotions in Migration Studies

“…Many studies have demonstrated the close connection between emotions and belonging in migration, both explicitly and implicitly. Emotions are essential for understanding various social phenomena: emotional labor performed by transnational workers, transnational childhoods, transnational care, return migrant visits, transnational family reunions, longing, and the emotionalized ''national'' family and migration writings (Herrero-Arias et al, 2020;See Skrbis, 2008). Furthermore, emotions are necessary for understanding migrants' subjectivities, as Walsh (2012) demonstrates in her research about British migrants' emotions in Dubai.…”