Deported Women and Motherhood

Speaker: María de la Cruz de Fátima Castro Ricalde, Visiting Affiliate Scholar GMC

This presentation shares a specific number of examples related to the deportation of women who can not keep their children with them. Thereby, they live their motherhood far away from them and begin to figure out how to be a mother in those circumstances. This research focuses on ten digital narratives from the digital archive Humanizando la Deportación. Through close analysis of their testimonies, this presentation offers portraits of maternity while showing how the separation of families forces us to qualify certain existing stereotypes and reinforce others while at the same time proposing various and different ways to understand this role. It shows how deported women have experienced separation from their children and the relevance of the idea of lost space (their homes, their country, the bodies of the people they love). Finally, it discusses how the harrowing experience of deportation has led these women to devise strategies for maintaining their emotional ties while still contributing to the material and intangible aspects of care.