Cultural Capital, Motherhood Capital, and Low-income Immigrant Mothers' Institutional Negotiations

Complementing the research on immigrants' exclusion from most U.S. service institutions as well as their "bureaucratic incorporation," this study examines how and why immigrants' negotiations with informal barriers vary across institutional contexts. Drawing on 25 in-depth interv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociological perspectives 2016-09, Vol.59 (3), p.694-713
Main Author: Lo, Ming-Cheng M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alliances
Bargaining
Child health services
Children
Childrens health
Comparative analysis
Constraints
Cultural capital
Culture
Females
Foreigners
Health care industry
Health services
Hispanics
Immigrant Adaptation
Immigrants
Income
Low income groups
Maternal and infant welfare
Mexican Americans
Motherhood
Mothering
Mothers
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Negotiations
Noncitizens
School age children
Schools
Teachers
United States
Women
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Summary:Complementing the research on immigrants' exclusion from most U.S. service institutions as well as their "bureaucratic incorporation," this study examines how and why immigrants' negotiations with informal barriers vary across institutional contexts. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews, I compare low-income, monolingual Mexican immigrant mothers' caretaking experiences across two settings: at schools and in health care facilities. My analysis suggests that different institutional settings place different demands for cultural capital on these women while offering varying opportunities for their usage of "motherhood capital," resulting in diverse patterns of institutional negotiations. These mothers' interactions with school personnel feature the experiences of "emergent alliance." When advocating for their children at healthcare facilities, they report a mixture of "successful confrontations" and "blocked negotiations." These findings contribute to discussions of immigrant inclusion/exclusion. More broadly speaking, by developing the concept of motherhood capital, the study dialogues with the literatures on cultural capital and political mothering.
ISSN:0731-1214
1533-8673
DOI:10.1177/0731121416629988