Transnational Motherhood and Forced Migration. Causes and Consequences of the Migration of Polish Working-Class Women 1989–2010

This article discusses and expands on two related issues. The first is the unexplored reasons for the departure of Polish migrant women: the forced migration phenomenon. The author describes the system behind forced migration as created at the intersections not only of care, gender and migration regimes but also of legal regimes. Second, the author points out that the close relation between forced migration and the process of ‘unbecoming a wife in the transnational context’ creates a distinctive type of transnational motherhood experience. In order to explain the specificity of these types of experiences better the author introduces a new typology of transnational motherhood biographies. The case study of Aldona is representative of the experiences of some Polish women in the period under study, 1989–2010.