Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore some of the ways in which individuals from the South African diaspora who give birth in the UK, navigate and (re)imagine their and their children’s identities as migrants/citizens within problematic and complex UK bureaucratic and health systems through matrescence.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on doctoral research that examines the pregnancy, birth, and postnatal experiences of members of the South African diaspora who give birth in the UK, this paper will explore some of the ways in which individuals navigate and (re)imagine their and their children’s identities as migrants/citizens within problematic and complex UK bureaucratic and health systems through matrescence (Raphael 1975). Triangulating data gathered by way of autoethnography, interviews, and participant observation, it investigates how the articulation of mother/migrant experiences manifest in daily life, and aims to unpack how women respond to these experiences according to their own cultural understandings of being South Africans living in the UK, and how those understandings in turn affect their overall maternal experience/s.

Examining women’s experiences beyond simply ‘being mothers’ (as an identity) and by seeing mothering or ‘motherwork’ (Collins 1994) as an intentional social practice involving both emotion and rationality (Ruddick 1980), we can examine how the maternal migrant is socially and historically constructed. Exploring how South African migrant mothers attempt to balance these transnational positionalities for themselves and their children, through visa applications, marriages, migrancy and citizenship, will constitute a valuable contribution to the existing literature on migrancy, maternal identity, and transnational parenthood more broadly.