Migrant mothers caring for the future: creative interventions in making new citizens

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This network addresses the 'Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past' programme's theme of 'Changing Families and Communities'. 'Migrant mothers caring for the future' brings together a range of international, national, methodological and multidisciplinary perspectives, including contributions from the disciplines of sociology, migration studies, cultural studies, cultural geography and the creative arts, to explore how migrant mothers realise and problematise their role in bringing up future citizens in modern Western societies, which are increasingly characterised ethnic, racial, religious, cultural and social diversity. In the UK context cultural, social and policy debates identify that the challenge for the future is to form a culturally diverse, yet socially cohesive, citizenry, through sustainable multicultural modes of conviviality (Erel 2011). The network stimulates critical thinking and knowledge exchange on the processes that shape migrant mothers' cultural and caring work in enabling their children to become future citizens. Specifically, the network considers the temporal and spatial changes informing migrant mothers' and children's citizenry by examining how institutions such as the family involved in making new citizens sustain social trust, cohesion and solidarity across differences over time and space. By drawing together a range of international and multidisciplinary perspectives the network contributes to developing a shared research agenda on the role of migrant mothers in promoting social cohesion among ethnic and cultural diverse children/young people in the face of increasing social cleavages. This is an issue that came to public prominence in the aftermath of the August 2011 riots. The network promotes shared conversations and knowledge exchange (between academic researchers, arts practitioners and policymakers) concerning migrant mothers' creative interventions in future citizenry. This is achieved through two sets of activities Activity 1 Seminar series and final conferenceThe international seminars and conference bring together leading research and cutting edge practice, consolidating a novel field of research, which is currently dispersed across different disciplines and national contexts, drawing on emerging scholars as well as international key thinkers in the field. Seminar 1: Citizenship, Migration and Mothering, focusing on theorizing migrant mothers' citizenship and its policy implications. Seminar 2: Building Resources for citizenship: mothers' cultural intervention, focusing on migrant mothers' cultural interventions into citizenship and creative research methods, including reflections on participatory theatre by workshop participants (cf. activity2).Final Conference: Migrant mothers caring for the future: creative interventions in making new citizens. The conference brings together perspectives from cultural studies, postcolonial studies, cultural geography, family studies, law, migration studies and arts practitioners, in particular a performance of the participatory theatre piece (cf. activity2). Confirmed keynote speakers: Patricia Hill Collins (University of Maryland, US), Ayalet Shachar (University of Toronto, Canada), Nira Yuval-Davis (University of East London), Hiroshi Motomura Hirokazu Yoshikawa (Harvard University, US), Ann Phoenix (Institute of Education, UK)Activity 2 - Participatory TheatreThe participatory theatre comprises 8 workshop sessions working with a group of 8 migrant mothers. In the workshops participants construct dramatic scenes on the topic of migration and mothering. Community theatre methods explore visceral, temporal, and corporeal aspects of realities and the social interactions within them. Through these creative articulations, the network co-produces theoretical and empirical knowledge with the migrant mothers, developing action-based methodologies.