Navigating citizenship and motherhood in and beyond Berlin

Abstract

This article centres on the predicaments of an East African migrant woman who resided in an Eastern EU country and is the mother of a child holding citizenship in the same EU country. Seeking asylum in Germany after having fled an abusive marriage, she found out that her residency in an EU country would most likely invalidate her asylum claim. Being classified as an EU migrant and withdrawing her asylum application, however, complicated her and her daughter’s access to welfare provision. Tracing this woman’s struggles in Germany and her onward migration trajectory to a country in the Arab world, offers a perspective on the consequences of legal complexity, challenging bureaucratic encounters, and missing support structures for a mother’s relationship with her daughter. Her negotiations of dominant parenting ideologies, attempts to create belonging, and striving to cope with racialization in the process of migration to and attempting to settle in Germany can be read as navigations of citizenship.