Periodic Reporting for period 4 - MigrantParents (Reproducing Europe: Migrant Parenting and Questions of Citizenship)
Período documentado: 2019-06-01 hasta 2020-10-31
The Reproducing Europe team zoomed in on the domain of parenthood and child rearing by studying ‘parenting encounters’. Three researchers focused on the experiences of Egyptian migrant parents in Paris, Milan and Amsterdam. Which ideas do they encounter about child rearing and parenthood and how do they deal with these expectations? What do they themselves expect from the state and other local institutions? In turn, three more senior researchers examined how professionals in the field of parenting deal with their socio-culturally diverse clientele. How do they envision their clientele and its needs and problems, and how do they deal with what they perceive as the main challenges in their work? By combining these perspectives, we learn how Europe’s diverse societies take shape and we gain a better understanding of the role of social professionals and migrant parents in that process. Ultimately, Reproducing Europe aimed to shed light on the complex genesis of a new, diverse Europe.
Welfare landscapes proved to be key sites for the negotiation of everyday forms of citizenship among migrant parents. These welfare landscapes introduced their specific logic, ethics and concerns into such negotiations of everyday citizenship. Egyptian migrant parents in turn elaborated their citizenship in dialogue with the (Italian, Dutch or French) state, while constantly weighing and doubting perennially uncertain potential futures in Europe and in Egypt.
These findings are published in a range of (forthcoming) articles, books and PhD-theses (see a selection of the references below). Our early findings have also been published in accessible form in the bi-lingual book Reproducing Europe: Migrant Families, Professionals and the Welfare State (in English/French/Italian/Dutch and Arabic), freely available at www.reproducingeurope.nl.
References cited
Chakkour, Soukaina. 2020. “Mothering in the space of hesitation: the case of Egyptian Mothers in Paris.” Presented at the ‘Mothering practices in times of legal precarity’ workshop organised by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (30 Nov-1 Dec 2020).
Koning, Anouk de, Milena Marchesi, Anick Vollebergh, Wiebe Ruijtenberg, Lucrezia Botton and Soukaina Chakkour (2018). Reproducing Europe: Migrant Families, Professionals and the Welfare State. Open Access public book available in English/Arabic, Dutch/Arabic, French/Arabic and Italian/Arabic (www.reproducingeurope.nl).
de Koning, Anouk. n.d. “The Will to Care: States and Subjects of Welfare in the Netherlands.” Under review with American Ethnologist.
de Koning, Anouk, and Anick Vollebergh. 2019. “Ordinary Icons: Public Discourses and Everyday Lives in an Anxious Europe.” American Anthropologist 121(2): 390–402.
de Koning, Anouk, Mette-Louise Johansen, and Milena Marchesi. 2020. “Introduction Special Issue ‘Paradoxical Orders: Parenting Encounters, the Welfare State, and Difference in Europe.’” Ethnography [Online First].
De Koning, Anouk, and Wayne Modest. 2017. “Anxious Politics in Postcolonial Europe.” American Anthropologist 119(3): 524–26.
de Koning, Anouk and Wiebe Ruijtenberg. 2019. “Welfare, Social Citizenship, and the Spectre of Inequality in Amsterdam.” Ethnography [Online First].
Marchesi, Milena. 2020. “The Intimate Public of Relational Welfare in Milan.” Ethnography [Online First].
Pettit, Harry and Wiebe Ruijtenberg. 2019. “Migration as Hope and Depression: Existential Im/Mobilities in and beyond Egypt.” Mobilities 14(5): 730–44.
Vollebergh, Anick. 2020. Circuiting parents’ voice: Parenting discussion groups and institutional healing in northeast Paris. Ethnography [Online First].
Vollebergh, Anick, Anouk de Koning and Milena Marchesi. fc 2021. “Intimate States: Techniques and Entanglements of Governing through Community in Europe.” Current Anthropology.