Search Results (11)

Background: Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, countless forcibly displaced individuals facing not only material loss, but also deep psychological distress, have sought refuge across Europe. For those traumatized by war, the absence of a shared language in therapy can hinder healing and exacerbate suffering. While cultural diversity in psychotherapy has gained recognition, the role of native-language communication—especially from a person-centered perspective—remains underexplored. Methods: This narrative review with a thematic analysis examines whether and how psychotherapy in the mother tongue facilitates access to therapy and enhances therapeutic efficacy. Four inter-related clusters emerged: (1) the psychosocial context of trauma and displacement; (2) language as a structural gatekeeper to care (RQ1); (3) native-language therapy as a mechanism of change (RQ2); (4) potential risks such as over-identification or therapeutic mismatch (RQ2). Results: The findings suggest that native-language therapy can support the symbolic integration of trauma and foster the core conditions for healing. The implications for multilingual therapy formats, training in interpreter-mediated settings, and future research designs—including longitudinal, transnational studies—are discussed. Conclusions: In light of the current crises, language is not just a tool for access to therapy, but a pathway to psychological healing. Full article

I employ autoethnography to undertake a broader scholarly inquiry on intergenerational relationships and transnational care shaped by global migration and aging. Specifically, I reflect on the dynamics of my relationship with my mother, beginning with my departure from my home and spanning a period of 40 years, 8 in China and 34 outside China. In doing so, I contemplate theoretical models of intergenerational solidarity, ambivalence, and role ambiguity. I also challenge cultural assumptions of filial piety. The geographical distance, passage of time, and acculturation process have profoundly influenced my perception of filial piety, which differs markedly from my mother’s. However, this divergence in consensual solidarity—marked by variations in attitudes, beliefs, and values—does not translate into weakened affectual solidarity, characterized by positive sentiments and emotions. Furthermore, aided by advancements in transportation and social media technology, I have been able to extend crucial emotional and some “instrumental” care to my mother, along with financial support if needed, despite limited hands-on care. Nevertheless, I must negotiate my care for my mother and navigate a delicate balance in coordinating my care efforts with those of my non-migrant siblings. Full article

The colonial visual archive has occupied in recent decades the work of scholars and artists from indigenous and racial minority communities, who revealed it as a major apparatus of historical meta-narratives. This article aims at pushing forward this preoccupation by revealing an additional scene: the art of Mizrahi women, descendants of Jewish communities of Arab and Muslim countries. Relying on a visual culture approach and focusing on an analysis of artworks by Mizrahi artist Vered Nissim, as well as on photographs of Mizrahi women, fund in Zionist archives, I demonstrate how Nissim’s work challenges the racial category of Mizrahi women as “natural workers”, constructed in the Zionist historical meta-narrative. Nissim does so by re-enacting the category’s paradigmatic visual image—the Mizrahi women cleaning worker—in a different way, visually and discursively. Body, voice, and visual image, three instances of the subjectivity of Mizrahi women cleaning workers that were separated, shaped, and mediated through Zionist colonial visual archives unite in Nissim’s work when embodied by a real Mizrahi woman cleaning worker: her mother, Esther Nissim. By casting her mother to play herself over the past twenty years, Nissim creates political conditions for the appearance of her mother as the author of her own history as she orally, bodily, and visually writes it in front of her daughter’s camera. Thus, Nissim joins a transnational phenomenon of global south artists who create political conditions enabling the self-imaging of colonized peoples, empowering the reading of colonial imagery and the historical meta-narratives attached to it through their situated knowledge and lived experience and, thus, constructing a counter history communicated visually. Full article

Approximately 3600 Korean children have been adopted to Australia, as of 2023. Existing studies have tended to approach transnational or intercountry adoption from child development, social welfare, or identity perspectives. Research on Korean adoption to Australia is relatively scarce. The current article approaches the population from a migration perspective, building on Richard Weil’s conceptualization of transnational adoption as “quiet migration.” Drawing on both Korean-language data from South Korean governments and Australian data, the authors analyse Korean adoption to Australia as a state-sanctioned transnational migratory mechanism that facilitated the orderly movement of children from so-called “deficient” families of predominantly single mothers in South Korea to adoptive families in Australia. Situating adoption practices within the socio-political contexts and larger migration trends of both countries, the authors identify multiple enabling factors for channelling the ‘quiet’ flow of Korean children for adoption and argue the very ‘quietness’ of the adoption system is a source of concern despite Australia’s relatively stringent regulations. A migration perspective and analysis of these enabling factors contributes to the conceptualization of adoption as a socio-political state-sanctioned phenomenon, rather than a solely private family affair. Full article

This paper will use the case study of a Chinese Mahayana Buddhist nun in a border town in Shan state, Myanmar, to explore the importance of identity in transnational Buddhism. Three life stories related to the Chinese Mahayana Buddhist nun will be told; that is, stories of her mother, her tonsure grandmaster, and herself. The main discussion of this paper is on the analysis of three dimensions of the nun’s identity, which are overseas Chinese, Mahayana monastic, and Buddhist nun. This paper will argue that identity is a crucial factor in transnational Buddhism, for identity helps an individual to communicate, interact, and take actions with others transnationally. Full article

This article maps out our critical engagement with the Third Theatre community pre- and post-COVID-19, with a focus on both performer training and the concrete material ways in which group theatres connected to this small tradition have responded to the challenges of the global pandemic. To illustrate our arguments, we draw on the Japanese craft of kintsugi—the transformative repair of ceramics—as a dispositif, employed to investigate the ways in which theatrical practice can comprise ‘an art of precious scars’, to paraphrase Stephano Carnazzi. This model allows for breaking with form and, importantly, re-modelling energy, which conversely becomes the most important aspect of the theatre laboratory, encompassing the relationships between body and form, individual and group, and artist and the wider society, importantly allowing for the creation of something that is more unique and authentic. Theatrical practice can thus be a clinch (bound like in a mother’s embrace) or jolted through disruption (like the cracks of kintsugi). Importantly, this disruption and its resolution takes place on both a level of form (as in the theatrical exercise) and on a broader, socio-political and economic plain. The article importantly focuses on both phenomena, and in so doing reflects on both the legacy and futurity of the transnational Third Theatre community. Full article

In the recent Central American migrations spurred by violence, political instability, and economic insecurity, women grapple with whether and when to bring their children with them in pursuit of safety in another country, and with fulfilling their roles as mothers from afar. Drawing from the transnational motherhood literature and critical feminist theories, this interpretive qualitative study examined transnational motherhood grounded in the lived experiences of Central American women (n = 19) over the course of their migrations to the US. Informed by the principles of grounded theory, the inductive analysis identified five processes in which migration and violence shaped meanings of motherhood: risking everything, embodying separation, braving reunification, mothering others, and experiencing motherhood due to sexual violence. The findings contribute knowledge of how violence shapes and informs women’s migrations and decision-making, and the consequences women endure in taking action to mitigate threats of violence in their own and their children’s lives. The analysis furthermore highlights the specific and profound effects of family separation on mothers. The voices, perspectives, and experiences of migrating mothers and the ways in which migration and violence shapes notions and lived experiences of motherhood are imperative to research, practice, and advocacy to change oppressive immigration policies. Full article

Growing research revolving around the plight of (Philippine) migrant domestic workers is noteworthy. However, the focus is largely on their role, capacity and identity as caregivers, meaning as labour migrants and transnational mothers engaged in both paid and unpaid care work. Building on the “care circulation” framework of Baldassar and Merla that conceptualises care as given and received in varying degrees by all family members across time and distance, this paper takes up the task of recognising migrant domestic workers as care receivers. In a particular way, this paper conceptualises care for migrant caregivers-transnational mothers that is based on a qualitative empirical study on the lived realities of Philippine migrant workers, who are also transnational mothers. An analysis of the participants’ narratives using the constructivist grounded theory approach reveals that their experience of God’s presence is central to how they navigate transnational mothering as labour migrants. This paper then proposes that their faith stories, significant as they are, be taken as a resource in providing them with spiritual care that takes their concerns into account. Full article

This article traces the transnational flows of constructions of the hypersexualized Muslim male through a comparative analysis of love jihad in India and the specter of grooming gangs in the UK. While the former is conceived as an act of seduction and conversion, and the latter through violent rape imaginaries, foregrounding both of these narratives are sexual, gender, and family dynamics that are integral to the fear of demographic change. Building upon these narratives, this study analyzes how influential women in Hindu nationalist and European/North American far-right milieus circulate images, videos, and discourses on social media that depict Muslim men as predatory and violent, targeting Hindu and white girls, respectively. By positioning themselves as the daughters, wives, and mothers of the nation, these far-right female influencers invoke a sense of reproductive urgency, as well as advance claims of the perceived threat of, and safety from, hypersexualized Muslim men. This article illustrates how local ideological narratives of Muslim sexuality are embedded into global Islamophobic tropes of gendered nationalist imaginaries. Full article

This article explores transformations in the worship of popular goddess Mazu as a result of (religious) tourism. In particular, it focuses on the role of transnational tourism in the invention of tradition, folklorization, and commodification of the Mazu cult. Support from the central and local governments and the impact of economic globalization have transformed a traditional pilgrimage site that initially had a local and then national scope into a transnational tourist attraction. More specifically, the ancestral temple of Mazu at Meizhou Island, which was established as the uncontested origin of Mazu’s cult during the Song dynasty (960 to 1276), has been reconfigured architecturally and liturgically to function as both a sacred site and a tourist attraction. This reconfiguration has involved the reconstruction of traditional rituals and religious performances for religious tourism to promote the temple as the unadulterated expression of an intangible cultural heritage. The strategic combination of traditional rituals such as “dividing incense” and an innovative ceremony enjoining all devotees of “Mazu all over the world [to] return to mother’s home” to worship her have not only consolidated the goddess as a symbol of common cultural identity in mainland China, but also for the preservation of Chinese identity in diaspora. Indeed, Chinese migrants and their descendants are among the increasing numbers of pilgrims/tourists who come to Mazu’s ancestral temple seeking to reconnect with their heritage by partaking in authentic traditions. This article examines the spatial and ritual transformations that have re-signified this temple, and by extension, the cult of Mazu, as well as the media through which these transformations have spread transnationally. We will see that (transnational) religious tourism is a key medium. Full article

The Israeli art field has been negotiating with the definition of Israeli-ness since its beginnings and more even today, as “transnationalism” has become not only a lived daily experience among migrants or an ideological approach toward identity but also a challenge to the Zionist-Hebrew identity that is imposed on “repatriated” Jews. Young artists who reached Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) as children in the 1990s not only retained their mother tongue but also developed a hyphenated first-generation immigrant identity and a transnational state of mind that have found artistic expression in projects and exhibitions in recent years, such as Odessa–Tel Aviv (2017), Dreamland Never Found (2017), Pravda (2018), and others. Nicolas Bourriaud’s botanical metaphor of the radicant, which insinuates successive or even “simultaneous en-rooting”, seems to be close to the 1.5-generation experience. Following the transnational perspective and the intersectional approach (the “inter” being of ethnicity, gender, and class), the article examines, among others, photographic works of three women artists: Angelika Sher (born 1969 in Vilnius, Lithuania), Vera Vladimirsky (born 1984 in Kharkiv, Ukraine), and Sarah Kaminker (born 1987 in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine). All three reached Israel in the 1990s, attended Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, and currently live and work in Tel Aviv or (in Kaminker’s case) Haifa. The Zionist-oriented Israeli-ness of the Israeli art field is questioned in their works. Regardless of the different and peculiar themes and approaches that characterize each of these artists, their oeuvres touch on the senses of radicantity, strangeness, and displacement and show that, in the globalization discourse and routine transnational moving around, anonymous, generic, or hybrid likenesses become characteristics of what is called “home,” “national identity,” or “promised land.” Therefore, it seems that under the influence of this young generation, the local field of art is moving toward a re-framing of its Israeli national identity. Full article