Transnational Moral Economies: Discourses of Poverty, Nationalism and Motherhood in Ukrainian Migration

• In Event: 134 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Paper Session. Globalization, Inequalities and Families

Abstract

Migration scholars no longer argue that poverty drives migration. However those who study the migration of women and particularly mothers continue to suggest they migrate to escape poverty. Qualitative studies report migrant women themselves explaining their decision to migrate in order to provide their children with basic material goods. While I do not dispute the economic hardships of these migrants, such claims also shield migrant mothers against the stigma of leaving children behind. This study uses ethnographic and interview data conducted with Ukrainian domestic workers in Italy and their children in Ukraine to examine how dominant poverty discourses shape the practices of migrants and their children. In a sample of migrants from a similar socioeconomic background, I found that some migrants deployed poverty discourses to explain their migration, but surprising almost half rejected poverty discourses. I argue that these migrants were able to renegotiate the poverty, gender and migration trope by adopting Ukrainian nationalism discourses which made claims to being “European” and “First World” and therefore incompatible with being “poor” and “Third World.” These two discursive practices created contrasting transnational moral economies that connected migrant mothers in Italy to their children in Ukraine with consequences for the transnational and integration practices of migrants, how their children used remittances, and notions of what it means to be a good mother and honorable person at a time when Soviet and capitalist moral orders coexist and collide.

Author

• Cinzia Solari, University of Massachusetts-Boston