Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Women's Studies International Forum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif “You give the skin, I give the bones”: Undocumented migrant mothers' maternal practices Tine Brouckaert, Chia Longman ⁎ Centre for Research on Culture and Gender, Ghent University, Rozier 44, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium Introduction This paper aims to contribute to the growing field of research on women, mothering and migration by focusing on the lives of un- documented migrant women (i.e. lacking official papers or documents, residence permits and/or citizenship status), who besides being in a very precarious position, face the challenges of raising their children in a very different socio-economic, legal and cultural context to that of their place of origin. The analysis draws on an ethnographic study of undocumented migrant women's maternal practice (Ruddick, 1989) or ‘motherwork’ (Hill-Collins, 1994, 2000) in the West-European state of Belgium, in order to get a better understanding of the child and citizen- rearing patterns of excluded members of society. Inspired by critical views of citizenship that go beyond its understanding in terms of merely a legal status with certain obligations and rights in the public sphere, we claim that despite their lack of formal citizenhood, the motherwork that undocumented migrant mothers perform, contains citizenship po- tential through their daily practices of childcare, societal participation and the negotiation of cultural values, identity and belonging. Motherhood and mothering have been viewed both critically and ambiguously in feminist theorisations of citizenship and societal en- gagement. 1 On the one hand, feminist critiques have revealed the ex- clusionary effects of privileging independence (which implies waged labour), autonomy and self-sufficiency as central to citizenship at the expense of interdependence and caring tasks (Porter, 2001). Hence feminist citizenship theorists have shown how care work, including mothering, needs to be recognised as an important aspect of citizenship responsibility (Kershaw, 2010; Lister, 2007, 2010; Pulkingham, Fuller, & Kershaw, 2010; Sevenhuijsen, 1998). However, certain ideologies which emphasise the citizenship potential of mothering remain con- troversial in terms of what is often seen as their universalist pretentions and essentialising tendencies (Brush, 1996; DiQuinzio, 1998). Fur- thermore, feminist theorizing about motherhood has often assumed the archetypical white, middle-class nuclear family that divides family life in two oppositional gendered spheres to be normative and universal (Hill-Collins, 1994). Yet, from a more diversified and intersectional perspective, migra- tion together with social position, ethnicity, religion and class are in- creasingly being conceived as important angles to consider mothering practices from, since they affect the expectations and responsibilities of mothers (Erel, 2012; Salaff & Greve, 2004: 106). Research increasingly focuses on women that deviate from the archetypical white, middle- class, heterosexual norm, including lone mothers, adoptive mothers and parents, LGTBQ parents, ethnic minority mothers, migrant mothers and transnational mothers. Yet only rarely has attention been paid to mo- thering practices among undocumented migrant women in the Eur- opean context who lack formal citizenship rights. Furthermore, these practices and identities may be understood as diverging from host so- ciety-dominant norms regarding legal and social positions such as na- tionality, ethnicity, skin colour, religion, language, etc. Taking into account these mothers' positioning can therefore help us to understand their lived experiences in childrearing, care work and societal partici- pation and the way they engage with dominant models of identity and belonging within the nation-state. These experiences and practices, we claim, can be viewed as resources, practices, or even acts of citizenship, ‘in that they instantiate ways of being that are political’ (Isin and Nielsen, 2008: 2). Besides their formal exclusion, many migrant women also experi- ence discrimination in Belgian society. As has been shown in studies for various ‘receiving’ European countries, racist imageries of migrant mothers in particular represent them as threatening, for they are held to be the primary agents of passing on foreign values and norms within the private sphere, as ‘non-integrated alien others’ and therefore disruptive of national homogenous conceptions of identity and belonging (Christou, Giorgio, & Rye, 2015; Gedalof, 2007; Lentin, 2004; Rassiguier, 2010; Yuval-Davis, 1997). In this contribution we critique this type of representation and wish to bring attention to the daily struggles of undocumented migrant mothers for themselves and their children. Yet we do not consider undocumented migrant mothers to be mere victims of structural constraints. Rather, we also want to highlight their changed caring roles and mothering responsibilities due to the migration process and context of the host society, which can empower https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2018.01.009 Received 10 January 2017; Received in revised form 1 January 2018; Accepted 22 January 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Tine.brouckaert@ugent.be (T. Brouckaert), Chia.longman@ugent.be (C. Longman). 1 As Andrea O'Reilly (2004: 2) explains, inspired by the writings of Adrienne Rich (1976): ‘The term “motherhood” refers to the patriarchal institution of motherhood that is male- defined and controlled and is deeply oppressive to women, while the word “mothering” refers to women's experiences of mothering that are female-defined and centered and potentially empowering to women.’ Women's Studies International Forum 67 (2018) 65–71 0277-5395/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T