Motherhood and Migration

Working with public urban spaces as its platform, Migrantas, an organization based in Germany, aims to make visible the thoughts and feelings of those women and mothers who have left their home country and now live in a new one. Many migrant mothers have to face issues and challenges that come along with trying to belong in a new country or culture, while working for a better future for their children. Migrantas was formed by three women who emigrated from Argentina to Germany in the early 2000s: Marula Di Como, Florencia Young, and Estela Schindel. These women found many shared experiences in being both mothers and immigrants in Germany. They realized that they could have many shared experiences (as well as differences) with other migrant mothers in Germany and the rest of Europe.

Migrant women and their experiences are often invisible to the majority of our society. By focusing on women, Migrantas hopes to shed light on the thoughts and feelings of a sector silenced twice, first as foreigners and secondly as women. The process of making migrant womens’ opinions visible is especially powerful for those from patriarchal cultures, where women are supposed to remain in the domestic realm. Their experiences become a part of the urban landscape, and they see how the city now speaks about them.

Migrantas incorporates tools from the visual arts, graphic design and social sciences. Migrantas meets with migrant women in their own collective spaces--organizations, community centers, cultural groups--and organizes workshops to collectively reflect on issues of migration. Women from very different national, cultural and social backgrounds and with different residency statuses, talk about their experiences and express these in simple drawings.

While Migrant women share a wide variety of thoughts, feelings, and experiences, motherhood is often a common thread. Questions of citizenship for their children, adapting to new cultures while raising children, and other important issues come up time and time again.

After a careful analysis of all the drawings from different workshops, Migrantas culls key elements and common themes from the drawings and translates these central motifs visually and artistically into pictograms--a visual language and a language accessible to everyone. Pictograms are the visual language of Migrantas. A pictogram’s simple, universally understandable image can stir emotions: people from different backgrounds recognize themselves in the representations, while others gain new insights or modify their own perspectives.

One of Migrantas’ major goals is to make the pictograms visible in public urban spaces. They appear as posters where there is normally advertising, as projected digital animations on public screens, or as flyers, postcards or shopping bags.Migrant womens’ perspectives and lived realities are taken out of the individual private space and made visible in the public space, thus creating an encounter which triggers reactions and self-reflection in the passerby in addition to empowering migrant mothers.

All Migrantas projects end with an exhibition. The participants can then see their drawings presented in public and experience public recognition of their voices and social participation.Visitors to the exhibition receive an opportunity to become better acquainted with the experiences of migrant women.