This edited volume explores how and why immigrant/refugee mothers’ experiences differ due to the challenges posed by the migration process, but also what commonalities underline immigrant/refugee mothers’ lived experiences. This book will add to the field of women’s studies the much-needed discussion of how immigrant and refugee mothers’ lives are dependent on cultural, environmental and socio-economic circumstances. The collection offers multiple perspectives on migrant mothering by including ethnographic and theoretical submissions along with mothers’ personal narratives and literary analyses from diverse locales: New Zealand, Japan, Canada, The United States, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands among others. The first section of the volume focuses on mothers’ roles in the family institution and the pressures and responsibilities they face in “creating” and “reproducing” families physically and socially. The second section shifts its attention to children and highlights mothers’ continued roles in the development of their children abroad, along with the gendered/generational dynamics in the settlement process and the resultant effects on motherhood responsibilities. In all chapters, readers will find how women negotiate their traditional roles in a new sociocultural milieu, and how mothering processes are critical in creating connections with traditions and homelands.

Anna Kuroczycka Schultes holds a Ph.D. in English-Modern Studies and a Women’s Studies certificate from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. A former Advanced Opportunity Program Fellow at UWM, Anna’s research focuses on migrant female domestic workers, immigration, mothering and care work. Her publications have appeared, among others, in The Journal of Research on Women and Gender (2010), An Anthropology of Mothering (Demeter Press 2011), and in Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (2011). Anna’s interest in migration is fueled by feminist research theories. Over the past several years she has been conducting research on Polish mothers in the Chicagoland area.

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Helen Vallianatos is an Associate Professor in Anthropology and Associate Dean in the Office of the Dean of Students, University of Alberta. Her research and teaching interests focus on food, gender, body and health issues, and the majority of her research involves collaborative, interdisciplinary work across disciplines and with various community organizations. Much of her recent research has focused on migrant mothers’ health and well-being.

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