This book focuses on a specific subset of work and the economy for entrepreneurial mothers across contexts. Here, we explore how socio-cultural, economic and national contexts (re)structure and (re)frame multiple nodes of power, difference, and the lived realities for mothers as workers across diverse contexts. At a broad level, the chapters address the different histories of oppression, movement of people, socio-economic conditions that underpin that experience, and, the various axes of power that affect the precariousness of work and citizenship on a global scale. On a more specific level, we set the work-family discourse within many points of contentions related to how researchers have conceptualized work-life interface, the specific assumptions embedded within these investigations, and the implications of these for how we (re)present the dynamics related to mothering and entrepreneurship. We see this type of interrogation as an important aspect of reframing not just the understanding of work-life interface, but also, that of how these affect the specific practices, choices, and responses of entrepreneurial mothers within specific localities and positionalities.

Talia Esnard is a Lecturer (Sociology) and Head/Chair of the Department of Behavioural Sciences, at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus, Trinidad and Tobago. Her research centers on issues related to women’s experiences in the entrepreneurial and educational spheres. Some of her work has been published in (i) Journal of Motherhood Initiative, (ii) Women, Gender and Families of Color, (iii) Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, (iv) Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, and (v) NASPA Journal about Women in Higher Education. Dr. Esnard is also a co-author of Black women, academe and the tenure process in the United States and the Caribbean. She was also a recipient of Taiwan Research Fellowship (2012) and Canada-CARICOM Faculty Leadership Program (2015-Brock University & 2018-Ryerson University).

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Melanie Knight is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her research interests are grounded in Black activism/organizing, Black collective economic initiatives, Black women business owners, and the subtext of race and gender in the discourse of enterprise. Her work has been published in the journal of Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, Gender, Work & Organization and the Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire. Outside of her work in the academy, she collaborates with a number of community organizations that deliver programs and advocate for the health and well‐being of Black Canadians. She also supports organizations that promote Black history and heritage. In 2018 she was awarded the Viola Desmond faculty award.

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