Legal precarity, migrant mothering and the space of hesitation in Paris

Abstract

Many migrant mothers residing in Paris find themselves in a situation marked by legal precarity, which causes them to be suspended between disparate possible futures for their families. This paper examines the case of one such mother. This paper proposes the notion of the “space of hesitation” to denote the way in which legal precarity creates a specific timespace for migrant mothers like Um Ahmed in which they perform their mothering. This timespace is at once marked by the juggling of multiple, disparate futures, and by the sense of a stand-still as it remains uncertain which of these possible futures will materialize. Um Ahmed therefore operates in a mode of hesitation as to what skills and cultural sensibilities she needs to cultivate in her children, and struggles with a profound self-doubt of her motherhood.