Being a Mother in a Strange Land : Motherhood Practices Experiences of Chinese Migrant Women in the Netherlands

Abstract

Chinese migrants have been emigrating to the Netherlands since 1911. Particularly after World War Two, female migrants outnumbered male migrants, yet their daily-life practices and transnational motherhood experiences have remained largely unknown. For this reason, my study pays attention to first-generation Chinese migrant women’s narratives on their experiences of post-migration life in the Netherlands, and especially to their real-life motherhood practices. Based on the narratives of 38 Chinese migrant women from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China and because of their individual differences, I could analyse their subject narratives with a gendered and intersectional lens. In this light, I found that intersectional differences shape migrant women’s post-migration lives, which indicates the significance of contemporary meanings of Chinese transnational motherhood practices.