To mother or to migrate? Ideal motherhood and normative migration: Perceptions from Nicaraguan migrant mothers

Sammanfattning: Female transnational labour migrants account for half of Nicaragua’s high volume of migrants, where women partake in international seasonal migration, primarily to Costa Rica, to improve the lives of themselves and their children. The migration processes are often informal, short-term and repetitive, often with reasons related to Nicaragua’s high poverty levels and unemployment rates. Female migration often also involves becoming a transnational mother, i.e. where motherhood and mothering are negotiated to expand financial support while being physically separated in periods. Since mothers normatively are expected to be the familial carer, this new negotiation of mothering occasionally subjects migrant mothers to stigma and guilt, something that is related to a deviation of the ‘ideal version of motherhood’. This bachelor thesis investigates how ideals of motherhood and mothering look in the Nicaraguan context, and relates this to perceptions of seasonal migrant mothers in rural communities in north-western Nicaragua. The thesis is based on an ethnographic field study conducted in Nicaragua over the course of ten weeks, January to March 2014, with theoretical framework of naturalized motherhood, ideal versions of motherhood and transnational motherhood applied.