Welcoming Encounters is a qualitative doctoral research project that asks immigrant and migrant women what makes Halifax, Nova Scotia, a welcoming community for them as mothers.
Like other provinces in Atlantic Canada, declining fertility rates and emigration from Nova Scotia have been held responsible for the province’s recent economic decline and aging population. Although Canada receives about 250,000 immigrants annually, less than 2% declare Atlantic Canada as their intended destination. Of these, less than half tend to stay and about 90% settle in urban areas. As a result, over the past decade, attempts to attract, retain and integrate new immigrants have gained increased significance in policy and practice at Federal, Provincial and Municipal levels. Changes in infrastructure, programs and initiatives have been instituted by governments, the business sector, communities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to attract, promote and retain immigrants in smaller centres.
A Welcoming Community Initiative (WCI) was one strategy that became particularly appealing to immigration stakeholders across Canada in the early years of the 21st century to promote the retention of newcomers and to facilitate their settlement and economic and social integration.
The concept of a “welcoming community” was identified by the federal government, the Nova Scotia provincial government, academics and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) as key to the successful integration of new immigrants. Its spatial dimension refers to a physical location in which newcomers feel valued and where their needs are served. It refers to a location that has the capacity to promote the inclusion of newcomers. Its discourse dimension refers to a community whose residents undertake actions that facilitate the integration of newcomers by making a collective effort to make individuals feel appreciated and included.
Promoting the need to create welcoming and inclusive communities for new migrants speaks to the recognition that Nova Scotia, predominantly a white and Anglophone community, has been characterized by a resistance to embrace the changes that come with an influx of immigrants from diverse countries around the world. Such resistance is manifested in individual attitudes towards visible and audible differences. Class, ethnicity, race and religion act as boundaries that separate many new migrants from social, economic, political and spiritual resources that might help to secure their wellbeing. Promoting the creation of a welcoming community also speaks of a shift in the level of understanding that processes such as integration, adaptation, and acculturation involve, both amongst the already established communities and the newcomers.
In this study, I explore the lived experiences of immigrant and migrant mothers through a life history approach, asking questions about how immigrant and migrant mothers understand the concept of integration; how immigrant and migrant mothers experience and define the meaning of a welcoming community; how they measure their integration; which institutions are perceived as critical to their integration process; what are the diverse experiences of immigrant and migrant mothers; and how their particular circumstances affect how they define the meaning of a welcoming community. In addition, I am also interested in looking at the ways in which settlement service providers and providers of support programs for immigrant and migrant mothers in the health sector contribute to the creation of a welcoming community for immigrant and migrant women who settle in Halifax.
My interest in exploring the lived experiences of immigrant and migrant mothers raising children in their permanent or temporary place of settlement builds on the fieldwork I conducted for my Master’s thesis with immigrant mothers living in Halifax. Like many women who are inspired to write about their experiences and female researchers who become interested in issues relating to mothering after having children of their own, my urge to explore these experiences emerged when I became a mother. At this time, I was faced with making cultural choices I did not fully anticipate before I had my children. Making cultural choices, for me, was a process that required a constant negotiation of the beliefs, cultural values and the knowledge of raising children I brought with me from Guatemala, the country where I was born, and those that are encouraged in Canada. Going through this constant negotiation made me realize that I had inadvertently become involved in what I termed cross-cultural mothering work, which involves an incredible amount of invisible intellectual labour.
Cross-cultural mothering refers to the complex forms of agency that migrant women deploy to adjust to new environments. It is the process by which migrant mothers re-work their identities and construct and continually negotiate their mothering practices when living within a culture or country other than the one in which they were born and/or grew up. This concept originates from the premise that these women, situated in specific social contexts and within social relations that are shaped by class, ethnicity, race, gender, and other intersections, bring with them a selective and dynamic knowledge of the values and beliefs of child raising held in their culture/country of origin. But due to their migration, they are involved in re-negotiating cultural values, practices, and institutions of their place of settlement, while maintaining ties with their countries of origin and/or the countries from which they migrated.
Working with an expanded concept of reproduction that includes not only childbirth and mothering, but also the work of negotiating heritage, culture and structures of belonging, I locate this research at the intersection of population and economic policies and civil society, and in particular the practices of service providers and NGOs vis-à-vis migrant mothers. Academic discussions of the importance of Nova Scotia becoming a more inclusive and welcoming province predominantly focus on economic integration. The social and cultural integration of immigrant families and individuals has largely been excluded from these conversations. My research study seeks to contribute to the ongoing academic discussions of integration, adaptation and acculturation in Canada, and in Nova Scotia specifically. It seeks to contribute to the study of both the local and the global governance of migration and to our understanding of what a welcoming community looks like for immigrant and migrant mothers and their families.
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María José is a scholarly and community research practitioner and community leader. She has worked in migration and settlement services for 25 years. She is a PhD candidate in the department of Social Anthropology at York University. Her academic interest is in the experiences of immigrant and migrant women and mothers. She combines her academic interest with her community volunteer work, including her volunteer work with the Immigrant Migrant Women’s Association of Halifax (IMWAH). She also has a personal interest in human rights, the eradication of gender and family violence, gender and development, and the rights of indigenous people in the Americas. She is a member of the Voice of Women for Peace and a member of the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network.