Motherhood, migration, and marginality: an ethnographic exploration of experiences of pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period of members of the South African diaspora living in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This thesis draws on ethnographic fieldwork that aimed to establish an understanding of the pre and postnatal experiences of South Africans who give birth in the United Kingdom (UK). It examines the nuances and complexities of this vulnerable period, as well as the intercultural ambiguities that may arise from navigating the contrasting social, cultural, and maternal expectations between South Africa and the UK in birthing and raising young children. Triangulating data gathered by way of autoethnography, interviews, and participant observation, it investigates how the articulation of migrant mother experiences manifests in daily life. Unpacking how women respond to these experiences according to their own understandings of being South Africans living in the UK, and how those understandings, in turn, affect their overall maternal experience/s. This research centres migrant mothers as “sites of knowledge and cultural production, engendering identity and belonging as they move through unfamiliar and transitory spaces”(Lombard 2022: 1). Highlighting the value of women’s narratives regarding the quotidian rhythm of life, it follows others in motherhood studies (Lombard 2022; Oliveira 2018; Chadwick 2018) who incorporate the interdisciplinary crossroads of feminist, literary, decolonial, anthropological, (im)migration, diaspora, digital and cultural studies. Utilising life writing, biography, and (auto)ethnography, it explores personal accounts of South African migrant motherhood to examine the ways in which individuals “reconfigure their identities and fluid situations into lived experience” (Lombard 2022: 2).