Motherhood on the move: forced migrant women from Ukraine

Drawing on the experiences of thirty-two refugee mothers who fled Ukraine with their children to Germany—to Berlin and Frankfurt/Oder—this article traces the co-constitutive relationship of displacement and motherhood through the angle of temporality. First, it uncovers how displacement in motherhood is defined by mothers’ urge and urgency to protect their children. Second, it shows how refugee mothers utilize different forms of ‘active waiting’ to rebuild their lives in search of stability for themselves and their children and affectively deal with the trauma of multiple losses. Last but not least, motherhood in displacement generates new forms of maternal subjectivity as the interlocutors ‘spend their time’ to patch the ruptures in their lives for the sake of their children, not only alone but also together with other refugee mothers through digital means. Negotiating motherhood thus provides room to productively navigate a temporal disorientation caused by the displacement.

doi: 10.1093/jrs/feae084 ISSN: 0951-6328