Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Motherhood, Migration And Methodology: Giving Voice To The Other, Ruth Desouza

The Qualitative Report

This paper discusses the need for multi-cultural methodologies that develop knowledge about the maternity experience of migrant women and that are attuned to women’s maternity-related requirements under multi-cultural conditions. Little is known about the transition to parenthood for mothers in a new country, particularly when the country is New Zealand. This paper will challenge the positivist hegemony of previously completed research on migrant women by reflecting on my own experience as a researcher grounded in a broadly-based, pluralistic set of critical epistemologies that allowed me to uncover the issues and contexts that impacted on the experience of migrant women. It …