Cape verdean migrants and extended mothering

Abstract

This chapter explores the concept of empowered mothering, defined by O’Reilly (2007:798) as “a general resistance to patriarchal motherhood”, in Cape Verde. It examines how Cape Verdean transnational family relations, profoundly marked by poverty and emigration, call for a rethinking of the concept of patriarchy. Building on this approach, the chapter explores a more nuanced interpretation of empowered mothering. It takes into account, not only the particularities of the Cape Verdean context, but also the significance of the women’s phenomenology, analyzed in terms of the inner conversation (Archer 2000). Based on anthropological fieldwork (2008-2010) amidst student Cape Verdean mothers in Porto, Portugal, the chapter demonstrates how, by focusing on the interplay between external influences and subjectivities, the difficulties the women encounter and the ways in which they deal with them, cannot easily be pigeon holed into dichotomous classifications of “empowered” versus “disempowered” mothering.