Learning to be a mother: Comparing two groups of Chinese immigrants in the Netherlands

Immigrant parents may have to rebuild their parenting knowledge after migration to keep up with their new milieu. Comparing two subgroups of Chinese immigrants, economic and knowledge immigrants, this study shows that the construction of different parental ethnotheories can be understood through the characteristics of their parenting knowledge acquisition, social networks and networking strategies. Findings from ego-network interviews with 15 economic immigrant mothers and 20 knowledge immigrant mothers indicate that the former tends to obtain practical tips and specific instructions directly... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Zheng, Lijie
de Haan, Mariëtte
Koops, Willem
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
Reihe/Periodikum: Asian and Pacific Migration Journal ; volume 28, issue 2, page 220-241 ; ISSN 0117-1968
Verlag/Hrsg.: SAGE Publications
Schlagwörter: Geography / Planning and Development / Demography
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26846858
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0117196819844380

Immigrant parents may have to rebuild their parenting knowledge after migration to keep up with their new milieu. Comparing two subgroups of Chinese immigrants, economic and knowledge immigrants, this study shows that the construction of different parental ethnotheories can be understood through the characteristics of their parenting knowledge acquisition, social networks and networking strategies. Findings from ego-network interviews with 15 economic immigrant mothers and 20 knowledge immigrant mothers indicate that the former tends to obtain practical tips and specific instructions directly from experts and acquire practical help from local, co-ethnic, small and dense networks, while the latter engages in critical peer-based learning in multicultural, open and long-distance networks. This study argues that a social network perspective can shed light on the “black box” of how parenting theories are reconstructed after migration.