Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper reflects on the everyday experiences of motherhood and the interpersonal relations within social infrastructures among Latin-American immigrant women as mothers of young children living in a Chilean intercultural city.

Paper long abstract:

This paper describes and reflects on everyday experiences of motherhood based on an ongoing ethnography accompanying ten low-income immigrant women as mothers of young children living in an intercultural and centric Chilean city.

These women experience permanent movement. Besides moving from abroad, they experience change and movement within the new country because of precarious job and housing conditions. While in a vital crisis, “luchar con capa y espada” reflects their disposition to face everyday life and “salir adelante.” In this context, they navigate the different forms of social infrastructures experiencing ambiguity. On the one hand, public healthcare and childcare places provide vital structure and containment, where also significant relationships that hold critical affective meaning emerge. On the other hand, within such places, they also experience both norms that feel coercive and meaningless and latent tension with the local population. In such context, my ethnographic work also shows the invisibilization of their social and cultural origins and meanings within systems that face high service demands and focus on responding to the normative contexts.

This paper also reflects on my own experiences – as a woman, mother and physician ethnographer– while accompanying the intimacy of women and building a relationship with them. I reflect on fieldwork tensions that, by questioning what I bring into the relationships, had brought light into my own journey towards embracing uncertainty in fieldwork and acknowledging the relevance of relating from a sense of profound respect and reciprocity towards the women I accompany.