Horton Sarah
Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Denver, CO 80217-3364, USA.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 2009 Mar;33(1):21-40. doi: 10.1007/s11013-008-9117-z.
Although recent scholarship on transnational mothers has rigorously examined the effect of migration on gender constructs and ideologies, it neglects analysis of the lived experience of separated mothers and children. In privileging the exploration of transnational separations through the single analytical lens of gender, such research reduces the embodied distress of mothers and children to mere "gender false consciousness." This paper calls upon anthropologists to redress this oversight by undertaking a phenomenological analysis of the lived experience of transnational motherhood. Eschewing an analysis of mothers and children as isolated social roles, I show that the suffering of mothers and children is profoundly relational. Through analysis of the narratives of undocumented Salvadoran mothers residing in the U.S., I show how the strain of such mothers' undocumented status is lived and shouldered within the intersubjective space of the family.
尽管近期关于跨国母亲的学术研究已严谨地审视了移民对性别观念和意识形态的影响，但却忽略了对与子女分离的母亲们及其子女实际生活经历的分析。通过单一的性别分析视角来优先探索跨国分离现象，此类研究将母亲和子女具体的痛苦简化为纯粹的“性别错误意识”。本文呼吁人类学家通过对跨国母亲身份的实际生活经历进行现象学分析来纠正这一疏忽。我避免将母亲和子女作为孤立的社会角色来分析，而是表明母亲和子女的痛苦是深刻相关的。通过对居住在美国的无证萨尔瓦多母亲们的叙述进行分析，我展示了这些母亲无证身份所带来的压力是如何在家庭的主体间空间中被体验和承担的。
