This international two-day symposium will focus on connections between motherhood, mothering practices, mobility and migration by interrogating the role, the experience, and the meaning of motherhood in the face of global mobility and migration. Migrant motherhood has been a subject of study within feminist migration studies, sociology, literary scholarship, diaspora studies, socio-linguistics, anthropology, and gender studies to name just a few fields for a number of years now. There is thus an urgent need to bring this research together and open a common debate, since in the face of an evolving conceptualisation of motherhood, changing mothering practices and shifting patterns of global mobility, motherhood in the context of migration calls for reconsideration.
This symposium is the first attempt to bring together scholars working in different fields on issues to do with migrant motherhood. The invitation of the confirmed speaker, Dr. Irene Gedalof, reflects the symposium’s emphasis on exploring points of intersection between motherhood and migration, individual agency and societal structures, maternal and migratory concepts and practices, as does the invitation to photographer Marina Cavazza to present her project Portrait of a (Working) Mother co-authored with Eglė Kačkutė that reimagines mobile motherhood visually and conceptually.
Participation of speakers from such European countries as the UK, Italy, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Albania, and Poland as well as further afield, including Australia, Israel, USA, Canada, and Russia is expected.
Website photography © Marina Cavazza