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

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 conference
The 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 Theatre
The 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.

Improving our understanding of migrant mothers' and families' citizenship practices has clear implications for promoting and improving policies on families, migration, integration and citizenship itself. Diverse groups of migrants come to live in Britain. We cannot think of mothering as a homogeneous set of practices. Knowledge of the different ways in which migrant mothers bring up their children is important to understanding the values, hopes and conflicts that form part of the lives of a future, ethnically diverse citizenry. There is no one set of mothering practices that educate children into citizenship. We ought to know how the mothering practices are different from one group to another and what factors account for these differences. 'Migrant mothers caring for the future' concerns itself with addressing these timely issues.

We will produce highly valued and widely exploited research, ensuring the widest possible dissemination of results to practitioners and policy makers in the areas of families, migration and citizenship as well as the general public. For this purpose, we build on the PIs and CIs extensive experience of public engagement, e.g European Commission Report input on Migrant Women (see CVs), and the specialist skills of the consultant Erene Kaptani in community theatre. Furthermore we will closely engage with the academic and practitioner beneficiaries, delivering tangible results for dissemination and knowledge transfer.
The network's overriding impact will be to promote social cohesion through empowering migrant mothers and families to harness their care and cultural work for developing a shared practice, culture and vision of future citizenship. The website will be a knowledge transfer tool with audiovisual resources and an executive summary for the general public, but more specifically for migration and integration, education and family practitioners, to further their awareness of migrant mothers' contributions to citizenship, e.g strengthening belonging and modelling participation.
The network will have an impact through a) the practice of community theatre which will impact on the mothers involved, b) the use of the advisory board to take 'lessons' to their respective organisations and fields. To promote the website and disseminate the findings we will widely publicise the results in general and specialist media, drawing on our personal and institutional links with media, such as the Open University's close links with the BBC, the PIs and CIs links with Black and Ethnic Minority Media (the Voice Newspaper, Colourful Radio, Telgraf Newspaper), as well as specialist newsletters, identified through the Advisory Group's (e.g. Migrants Rights News, Evelyne Oldfield Trust, mumsnet), publicizing the outcomes of the research network through press releases and offering to write short articles as well as being available for interviews.
A further impact of the participatory theatre workshops for the participating migrant mothers is to build their capacities through providing training in performance based methods, but also through a dialogical engagement with the PI and CI, raising their awareness of their creative interventions into citizenship. We plan to use this engagement with non-academic participants in the network to develop a research grant, after the completion of this project, aiming for full development of action and art-based research methodologies and creative techniques in relation to promoting citizenship among migrant mothers.
The network will consolidate a new field of research through the seminars and conference, the special issue of a refereed journal enabling international networking and knowledge transfer and ECR capacity building.