Mothering on the Move: New NNF grant for Maria Marti Castaner

The five-year project, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, brings together partners from Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia), the University of Sousse (Tunisia), and the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (Spain) and the University of Copenhagen.  

When migration meets motherhood

What happens when migration meets motherhood? How does giving birth or caring for a child while migrating affect maternal and child health and wellbeing? How do these journeys shape the way women care for themselves and their children and engage with maternal and child health services? How do formal and informal health services and networks of care respond to their needs? How can we re-think existing services to enhance intergenerational health by supporting migrant women’s agency and wellbeing during their migration journeys?

INTERGEN seeks to investigate these questions among forcibly displaced migrant families in three so-called “transitory destinations”, places where people may be passing through, becoming stranded, choose to settle, or prepare to return.  Unlike most research that focus on refugee camps or resettlement, INTERGEN turns its attention to these overlooked migration hubs across Colombia, Spain and Tunisia, where every year, many women and children live through pregnancy, birth, and early childhood while displaced or on the move.

Together with our community and research partners, we aim to co-develop contextualized interventions that strengthen the health and wellbeing of mothers that migrate across these three sites, enhance the competences of local care providers, and generate new knowledge to promote services centred on women’s agency and wellbeing.

Rethinking maternal care on the move

Informed by participatory action research, INTERGEN will carry out three longitudinal mixed-methods case studies across the project sites. The project will examine how different policy environments, healthcare systems, and social conditions shape the health and wellbeing of forcibly displaced migrant pregnant women, mothers, and their young children, as well as their engagement with services.

By combining in-depth local insights with cross-country comparison, INTERGEN aims to rethink models of “nurturing care”; moving beyond emergency responses towards approaches that recognize and support the strength and agency of women on the move.

INTERGEN

INTERGEN is a collaboration between Universidad de Antioquia (co-PIs Alexandra Restrepo and Manuela Orjuela-Grimm, Colombia), University of Sousse (Wejdene Mansour, Tunisia), Barcelona Institute of Global Health (Stella Evangelidou, Spain), local NGOs, and the University of Copenhagen (Nanna Maløe from Global Health and Gabriel Abarca-Brown from Humanities), with MHPSS Collaborative as communication partner.