The Spatiality of Motherhood: Migrant Mothers Living in Subdivided Units in Hong Kong

Home is a fertile site where researchers can investigate the everydayness of intersectional inequalities and the intricate negotiation between structure and human agency, particularly women’s subjectivities. This paper examines the intersecting marginalisation of gender, class, migration status, and housing informality, by focusing on the everyday lives of migrant mothers living in subdivided flats in Hong Kong. Data was collected through ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews conducted with tenants of subdivided flats in two middle-to-low-income neighbourhoods. Based on the biographical stories of 47 women and 23 children, the findings illustrate the centrality of space in the construction of motherhood and how female migrants deployed a repertoire of spatial strategies to sustain family lives in deplorable conditions. Through documenting the mothering practices and narratives of the female migrants, the paper delineates the ways in which these mothers replicated and contested the dominant classist and gendered discourse of motherhood configured under a neoliberal and traditional familial culture. The paper throws light on the unrecognized domestic labour of the migrant mothers in everyday life and problematises the stigmatisation and devaluation of migrant motherhood in the context of housing informality, by showing how these migrant mothers negotiated structural constraints with resilience and through individual and collective actions.