Invisibilised Visions : Migrant mothers and the reordering of citizenship in a Nordic welfare state context

Abstract

In a time of welfare state restructuring, migrant background ‘stay-at-home’ mothers have become a politicised social category, constructed as unproductive and socially disengaged. The article examines the ways newly arrived women, who take care of children at home, enact and negotiate their own and their families’ early citizenisation process, with a particular focus on institutional encounters. Drawing on two case stories from the capital region of Finland, I discuss the dynamics of mothers’ claims-making for a transitionary citizenship, from the sphere of the home via social rights based public daycare to language training and education. I conclude that the constrained agency migrant mothers are subjected to, risks shaping a new gendered and racialised order of parenthood and ultimately of citizenship in the transforming welfare states.