Paper short abstract:

This paper demonstrates how mothers living in liminality in status, time and space navigate motherhood in the context of precarious migration through particular ways of ‘doing’ friendship, and how spaces and places both facilitate and constrain these friendship practices.

Paper long abstract:

Women and mothers who migrate abroad often face an array of challenges, including separation from support networks, becoming a (single) mother, precarious immigration status, poor-quality accommodation, financial hardship, racial minoritization, language barriers, and hypermobility whilst also feeling ‘stuck’. The intersection of these factors creates particular kinds of support needs. This paper brings together findings from two ethnographic studies: first, mothers and their children living in a reception centre in Belgium having fled war in Ukraine, and second, mothers from different countries with insecure immigration status living with their children in a neighbourhood in London, UK. We argue that mothers living in liminality - in status, time and space - navigate motherhood post-migration through particular ways of ‘doing’ friendship. We highlight the importance of practical and material help in friendship practices, whilst underlining the need to exercise caution or ‘hold back’ in developing friendships. Additionally, we show how the physical spaces in which mothers live and interact with others shape how they do friendship. We demonstrate how different types of shared living spaces constrain friendship practices by embodying liminality and ‘stuckedness’ (Hage 2015). We also consider how different kinds of ‘social infrastructure’ (Klinenberg 2018, Small and Adler 2019) present opportunities to form and sustain friendships by offering temporary relief from liminality and creating a sense of belonging. This paper contributes to understandings of the roles of motherhood and domestic and social spaces in shaping friendship and support practices in the context of precarious migration.