Motherhood and Migration: Two powerful forces for a Neohumanist world

Motherhood and Migration: Two powerful forces for a Neohumanist world

Migration, particularly forced migration, demands that those on the move undertake unimaginable risks and unheard of challenges. For women, this all too often includes violence in their home countries, on the migratory route, in refugee camps or in their own places of residence. Pregnant women and mothers of infants are disproportionately vulnerable to long term effects of traumatic uprooting and the resultant isolation from family, friends, and embedded social networks.

We will look at how mothers from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and 10 or more African nations utilize AMURTEL Greece’s safe women’s space to reshape their concepts of themselves as mothers and women. For almost all, motherhood is a primary personal and social role which defines them, both individually and in society, and one which imparts a deep sense of joy and fulfillment. The shared commonality and power of motherhood is the base from which community is formed and knowledge is gained. With many of the mothers being illiterate or having little formal education, the thirst for knowledge propels them from initial curiosity in educational workshops on infant care and nutrition to a readiness for conversations of more sensitive issues around reproductive health, sexuality, gender based social norms, abuse and human rights.

Centered within the context of integration into the host country, an emerging narrative of women embracing opportunity, seeing beyond deeply ingrained religious and social taboos, finding their voices, envisioning a just and equitable future for their children and using the knowledge gained at AMURTEL to support other mothers in their communities opens doors for a greater personal agency in creating lives based on lived values and an expanded vision of the future.