WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE. THE TRANSNATIONAL MATERNAL FOODWAYS OF POLISH MIGRANTS IN BRUSSELS

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyse social change in the area of the gendered care practices and identities of migrant mothers, who were forced by the social and economic situation in Poland to (illegally) work abroad without their children and families. It asks what kind of experiences of social change we can find if we look at the foodways practised by transnational mothers from the working classes. The concepts of "transnational maternal foodways" and "maternal bustling around foodways" will be used as tropes to discuss and explore the gendered changes in motherhood experienced by Polish migrants. The analysis presented here is based on the results of extensive fieldwork conducted both in the villages and small towns of Eastern Poland and in Belgium (particularly in its capital, Brussels), and on 54 autobiographical narrative interviews with Polish women who, during the two decades after the fall of socialism in Poland (1989-2010), worked permanently or cyclically abroad. The analysis combines critical food studies with gender and migration studies. 1

Full text

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE.
THE TRANSNATIONAL MATERNAL FOODWAYS
OF POLISH MIGRANTS IN BRUSSELS
SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
FACULTY OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW
e aim of the article is to analyse social change in the area of the gendered care practices and identities
of migrant mothers, who were forced by the social and economic situation in Poland to (illegally) work
abroad without their children and families. It asks what kind of experiences of social change we can nd
if we look at the foodways practised by transnational mothers from the working classes. e concepts
of “transnational maternal foodways” and “maternal bustling around foodways” will be used as tropes
to discuss and explore the gendered changes in motherhood experienced by Polish migrants. e analysis
presented here is based on the results of extensive eldwork conducted both in the villages and small
towns of Eastern Poland and in Belgium (particularly in its capital, Brussels), and on 54 autobiographical
narrative interviews with Polish women who, during the two decades after the fall of socialism in Poland
(1989–2010), worked permanently or cyclically abroad. e analysis combines critical food studies with
gender and migration studies.1
KEYWORDS: transnational motherhood, foodways, gender, working class migrants, agency, (un)
becoming mothers, Poland
e issue that especially caught my attention during ethnographic eldwork in Brus-
sels, conducted between 2007 and 2009 in the community of Polish transnational
working class mothers, was a constant “bustling around” foodways (krzątanie się, see
1 e article analyzes data from the research project from the National Science Center “(Non)tradi-
tional traditionals? e transformation of rural famililies from the perspective of women in the
years 1989–2019” (nr 2016/23/D/HS6/00705), part of which have not have not been analysed so far.
e translation was nanced by the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw (BST 173200).
Iwould like to extend special thanks to Renata E. Hryciuk for her support in the process of prepar-
ing the article, and for creating a space for discussion at the anthropology of food seminars at the
Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. I would also like to thank
Dr. Helena Patzer and my colleagues from the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, for
inspiring discussions and comments on subsequent versions of the text.
Ethnologia Polona, vol. 41: 2020, 69 –91
PL ISSN 0137 - 4079, DOI: 10.23858/EthP41.2020.2135

70 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
Brach-Czaina 1999; Budrowska 2009).2 is term depicts an intrinsic part of the
experience of women who, after the collapse of socialism, between 1989 and 2010 were
forced to migrate alone and take up illegal work as agricultural, care and cleaning
workers. is “bustling around” was integrated into the space of the city and into the
transnational network of Polish migrants. It would ll every free moment and was
also strictly regulated by an– initially unclear to me– complicated code. It was focused
on dozens of activities that together formed what I call “transnational maternal
foodways”.
e proposed term seeks to encompass two distinct areas. e rst of these is the
relationship between mothers and children left behind in the care of others in Poland.
is relationship was organised around common beliefs, behaviours and practices
regulating long-distance maternal care through food and feeding work shared by both
migrant and sending communities. e second is comprised of a series of embodied
and aective norms and moral patterns related to everyday foodways, in other words
by the behaviour of migrant women in Belgium entwined in a nexus of gendered food
cultures (Counihan 1999). is includes all the interactions and processes involved
in making food undertaken by migrant workers, such as planning, shopping, prepar-
ing, cooking, sharing and eating food. All these practices were carried out both inside
and outside their rented ats, as well as in the various socio-territorial spaces of the
working class in Brussels. What is more, this study deals with the migrant mother’s
attitude towards herself, to the needs of her body: its nutrition, taste, pleasure, disci-
pline and (self-) control. is dimension is too often absent from analyses of migrant
women’s motherhood, which focus mainly on work and the caring dimension of the
relationship between women and their families.
All the above-mentioned practices making up “transnational maternal foodways”
and the “maternal bustling around foodways” were usually co-practiced, observed,
commented on, narrated, conrmed and controlled, as well as “displayed” (see: Finch
2007) in female migrant groups. Most often, these were constituted by roommates
from rented ats: friends, neighbours and relatives from the same villages and small
towns in Poland. us, they never escaped the attention of the transnational com-
munity of labour migrants, stretched between Poland and Belgium.
e aim of the article is to analyse the change in the area of gendered care practices
and the identities of transnational migrant mothers. More precisely, I want to ask
what kind of experiences of social change we can nd, if we look at the foodway
models that are practised by transnational mothers from working classes.3 rough
2 e translation of the Polish phrase krzątanie się is cited after the work of Kowalczyk (2016, 47).
InPolish this term is particularly associated with movements around the kitchen and the household.
3 e export of Polish women to do care work abroad after 1989, and then after Poland’s accession to
the EU in 2004, concerned not only women from the working classes, but also from the middle

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 71
this text I want to raise two theoretical questions. e rst revolves around the question
of agency and bargaining with patriarchy. e second pertains to the widening of the
methodological discussion of female emancipation in migration, in order to include
a more phenomenological approach, acknowledging women’s feelings and emotions,
body politics, intimacy and sexuality. To answer these questions, I will analyse data
gathered during seven months of participant observation (carried out between 2007
and 2009). e group studied are mothers forced by the social and economic situation
in Poland to work (illegally) abroad in the period of postsocialist transformation
(1989–2010), and thus to leave their children and families temporarily in Poland.
eethnographic material consists of eld diaries and 54 autobiographical interviews
I conducted with transnational mothers in Belgium (Brussels and its surroundings)
and in villages and small towns in Eastern Poland (Podlasie region). I analysed the
narrations, but also observed non-verbalised, embodied practices of long-distance/
transnational maternal foodways, including food and feeding work. I focus both on
the content of autobiographical experiences and analyse the interactions in which I
participated with the female migrants. e analysis is situated in the context of migrant
communities, and also incorporates the local communities exporting women’s work.
e results of the study in the Polish context will make it possible to broaden the
already considerable body of knowledge about the foodways’ of overseas care migrants
and transnational mothers from Asia (see Patzer 2018; Camposano 2018; Mata-Codesal
and Abranches 2018) and Central and South America (Dreby 2006; Carling and
Menjivar and Schmalzbauer 2012). It will extend such approaches to the food expe-
riences of migrants from Central and Eastern Europe, which are still understudied
(see Main 2016; Ślusarczyk and Pustułka 2016; Bielenin-Lenczowska 2018). Focusing
on food reveals new possibilities of interpreting patterns and the specics of gendered
emancipation in migration processes. It focuses primarily on the problem of the
empowerment of the excluded: of working class mothers who feed into the European
proletariat of migrant workers. e intensive development of food studies over the
last decade in Poland (see Hryciuk and Mroczkowska 2012; Bielenin-Lenczowska and
Hryciuk 2018) and in the world (see Carrington 2007; Jackson 2009; Counihan
andVan Esterik 2013; Parsons 2015; Counihan 2018) opens up an analytical focus that
can usefully be applied to the experiences of Polish migrants.
class. In Poland, the enormous costs of the transformation from socialism to a neoliberal economy
fell mostly on women, regardless of their class background. In the period 2004–2007 alone, over
amillion Polish women left to work abroad. However, in the study the group that interests me most
is working-class women who have struggled with multiple exclusions. e undocumented status of
my respondents– even after Poland’s accession to the EU– is related to the fact that many EU
countries opened their labour markets to Poles later. is was the case with Belgium, which fully
opened its labour market for Poles only in 2009.

72 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
TRANSNATIONAL MOTHERHOOD, AGENCY
AND THE FOODWAYS OF WORKING CLASS WOMEN
“Transnational maternal foodways” and a “maternal bustling around foodways” cannot
simply be interpreted in terms of the reproduction of patriarchy, since they constitute
an important weapon of the weak (Scott 1985) or strategy of bargaining with patriarchy
(Kibria 1995), as I was to nd more than once during my ethnography with migrant
women. Especially when I unwittingly violated these norms by inviting my interloc-
utors– who lived in crowded workers’ ats, deprived of intimacy– to research inter-
views in Brussels cafés. When once again, in response to the suggestion of a place to
meet, I encountered a similar pattern of moral outrage and a rm refusal, my initial
confusion began to gradually give way to an understanding of the gendered rules
followed by migrants in their everyday foodway practices.
e theoretical framework that I propose opens up wider possibilities of how to
interpret gender negotiations when analysing the practices of individuals and groups,
who suer multiple social exclusions, or whose lives are played out in patriarchal
“strongholds”. Emphasizing the ambivalent complexity of agency through food renders
it more dicult to automatically qualify the continuity of involvement of migrant
mothers in transnational foodways as a mere top-down reproduction of existing gender
norms in the household. at is why all the practices that I dene as “transnational
maternal foodways” and the ways in which they are implemented on a daily basis
through a “maternal bustling around foodways”, will serve to direct attention to the
work of the excluded. I will show that these eating and feeding practices can be inter-
preted in terms of “weak resistance” (Pasieka 2015). is can be seen more clearly when
we place the activities of migrant mothers in the context of two wider processes that
are closely linked to their migrations and of global impact.
Firstly, “transnational maternal foodways” are a response to the neoliberal mech-
anisms of forced uprooting women from intimate family relationships. is process
particularly aects poor women, who join the ranks of the migrant proletariat, and
includes those eeing systemically normalized violence and a lack of institutional
safeguards (Urbańska 2016). In this context of coercion, and not infrequently illegal
work and also poverty– and thus overlapping exclusions– resorting to practices
associated with the traditional legitimate role of the “feeding mother”, but in a new
form adapted to transnationality, emerges as a strategy for ghting to maintain con-
tinuity of relations despite physical distance. Secondly, “transnational maternal food-
ways” become a struggle for the social recognition of the migrant woman as a mother.
ey take shape in the situation of a ubiquitous “context of suspicion” in relation to
emigrating women and of various practices of “depriving them of their roles”.
An important element of this deprivation of roles was the moral panic around
Euro-orphanage in Poland, which broke out after the mass migrations of women

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 73
related to Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004. Euro-orphans were dened as aban-
doned children, left behind by migrant mothers. e reaction to this spectre included
the institutionalization of control and disciplining activities of migrant families, and
investigating and monitoring children at schools. It also exacerbated various forms of
social suspicion and a lack of legitimacy with regard to migrant women’s work, while
at the same time brushing over the economic coercion and violence that pushed the
women to seek survival elsewhere (Urbańska 2015). e actions of migrant women
generated in such a threatening context display symbolic aspects of identity related
to care and sacrice, as well as bustling around and resourcefulness. Such actions in
conditions of coercion and social stigmatization become a causative, often reective
form of political counteraction: a specic management of the trajectory of “(un)
becoming a mother in the transnational context” (Urbańska 2016), which has features
of individual and collective women’s resistance strategies.
e concept of “displaying families” (Finch 2007) that inspired me to develop
terms such as “transnational maternal foodways” and “maternal bustling around food-
ways” helps to see this resistance in numerous interactions and in the “banal”
micro-practices of everyday life. It assists in highlighting the identity-relational dimen-
sions of maternal foodways, which take place on both sides of the border: in family
settings and the sending community, as well as in the migrant communities. Janet
Finch denes “display” as “the process by which individuals, and groups of individuals,
convey to each other and to relevant audiences that certain of their actions do con-
stitute ‘doing family things’ and thereby conrm that these relationships are ‘family’
relationships” (2007: 67). e concept of “displaying families” adds a social environ-
ment that should properly read, accept, and conrm these practices as necessary for
the eectiveness of the process of family reconstitution. In my case, this perspective
emphasizes the dimension of power negotiations by mothers and shows resistance and
agency with regard to the trajectory of “(un)becoming a mother in the transnational
context”. Describing the dierent dimensions of the repertoire of “transnational mater-
nal foodways”, taking into account the perspective of displaying, I will try to address
three of their elements: why is display important in transnational practices of mothering
by foodwork and feedwork; how is displaying done; and to whom do “long-distance
care relationships” need to be displayed? (see Finch 2007, 67, original emphasis).
LINKING FOODWAYS WITH A LOST DIMENSION OF MOTHERHOOD
e next point I want to raise in this article is the need of including both a wider
perspective on motherhood and the concept of foodways in the research methodology
(Parsons 2015), which enables covering a wider scale of phenomena than just food
and feedwork (DeVault, 1991). I propose that those aspects of motherhood which are

74 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
absent from existing studies of transnational motherhood should be recognised and
incorporated. is is primarily a question of adding to the analysis the subjective
dimension of the migrant mother’s relationship with herself. Among other things,
this includes: her reexive attitude towards herself as a woman, her relationship with
her body (nutritional concerns, pleasure vs discipline), her intimate needs (sexuality)
or needs related to pleasure, fullment and satisfaction, as well as notions of limitation,
discipline and control. rough this approach, it will be possible to reveal further
dimensions of “long-distance care” (Patzer 2015; 2018), as well as further aspects of
the gender revolution in migration (Parreñas 2001).
Feminist theories of motherhood have for several decades emphasized that the
inclusion of this dimension in analyses allows for a better understanding of subjectivity
and the expression of a female “voice”, how economic and political coercion plays
itself out on the female body, and a break between “I” and “we” (see Hays et al. 1995;
Hryciuk and Korolczuk 2014; Kronenberg 2016). Unfortunately, works devoted to
transnational motherhood do not encompass this important dimension, focusing
mainly on numerous transnational care practices, the circulation of care and forms
of its reproduction, or on conditions of the gender contract reconguration (e.g.
Parreñas 2001; Lutz 2010; 2015; Pustułka, Struzik, and Ślusarczyk 2015; Pustułka and
Trąbka 2018). is lack is one of the reasons why I argue for compiling a more com-
plete repertoire of ways of looking at the lives of working mothers. Linking renego-
tiated, often emancipating areas of their lives, as well as looking at the numerous
ambivalences and contradictions that emerge when these areas are brought into mutual
relation, may reveal interesting dimensions of social change. I refer here primarily to
the juxtaposition of the most-analysed areas of work and transformations of care with
the question of how workers relate to themselves as women and to their own bodies
or intimate lives, issues only sporadically analysed in the area of migration studies.
TRANSNATIONAL MATERNAL FOODWAYS
e panoply of “transnational maternal foodways” performed by migrant mothers is
impressive. Eorts are made to continue virtually each of the dozens of activities
performed by women in family homes in Poland that make up the work around food
(cf. Carrington 2007; DeVault 1991), in a form adapted to transnationality. e phys-
ical absence of the mother in the home, which requires a reorganisation of “the division
of feeding work and foodwork in the household” (cf. DeVault 1991), rarely involves
afull gender role reversal. Daily kitchen management is transferred to the virtual
sphere (of phones, letters, text messages, etc.), where the mother becomes a transna-
tional manager. In the new context, despite the distance of hundreds of kilometres,
she still does both household work and physical work related to food. First of all, she

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 75
tries to maintain the status of a “gatekeeper”: so she tries to plan, monitor and settle
issues of food organization. On the one hand, these concern minor everyday issues,
such as supervising the structure of family mealtimes and various nutritional concerns
about the diet. On the other, it also involves decisions of greater importance related
to nominating other people, usually women, sometimes institutions (boarding
schools), to take over the everyday care and nutritional obligations of the mother, as
well as the organization of a network of suppliers, or participating in the exchange of
diverse barter favours in the neighbouring community (see Patzer 2018; Krzyżowski
2013).
Interestingly, in addition to the dimension of transnational management, mothers’
practices also include a number of activities related to their own regular provisioning
of the household (Carrington 2007), i.e. collecting purchases and preparing homemade
food to be sent back to their families. is involves a range of activities that compose
a cyclical developing of a stock of food in packages and those related to them: learning
where to buy “appropriate” food, grocery and marché shopping, sharing favourite or
new meals and products with children (see: “social remittances” Levitt and Lam-
ba-Nieves 2011; Patzer 2015; 2018) and saving on one’s own costs of living and eating
abroad. Finally, and most importantly, it culminates in sending homemade food back
home in packages (Carrington 2007).
ere are so many eorts involved in the transnational foodwork and feedwork
activities, that if one tried to identify those that cannot be reconstructed virtually, one
would actually be left just with dishwashing and cleaning the table after meals.
Although sometimes eorts are also made to virtually control even this area, as man-
aging mothers sometimes outsource people from outside the immediate family (rel-
atives, neighbours) to perform such activities. And on more than one occasion, Iended
up travelling on a bus with new or second-hand dishwashers sent to families (as well
as microwaves, grills, washing machines, sets of pots, etc.). Let us now have a closer
look at these strategies.
DISPLAYING TRANSNATIONAL MATERNAL FOODWAYS:
“BUSTLING AROUND” AS BARGAINING WITH THE TRAJECTORY
OF (UN)BECOMING MOTHERS
At this point, I would like to return to the analysis of the mysterious refusals of my
interviewees mentioned above, which appeared in response to my proposal to conduct
interviews in Brussels cafés over cake and coee. It was the similarity of the structure
of the statements of the invited women, who did not know each other and could not
hear each other, that enabled me to read them as rules and be sure they were expres-
sions of normative behaviours. e excuses for refusing were oered in longer sequences

76 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
(accounts, see Scott and Lyman 1968). It therefore appeared that the very proposition
of meeting in a café over coee and cake was perceived as a stigma– as if I had assumed
that the interlocutor belonged to the category of immoral women. A typical reaction
was that of Anna, a thirty year old married woman and mother of two children, an
economic migrant from a small town in Podlasie, who circulated alternately with her
neighbour in a three-month system of house cleaning work. Although at rst Anna
willingly agreed to tell me about her experiences of transnational motherhood, explain-
ing that she needed to speak to a stranger about her emotions, she reacted with
indignation to my proposal to talk in a quiet café in Brussels: “I do not roam” around
cafés here. I came here to work, not for pleasure.” Upon my explanation that she
would not incur any costs, because I would cover the bill from my grant allowance,
and assurances that the café is a regular pastry shop, not a suspicious bar with dancing
and alcohol, Anna refused even more strongly: “What would my husband think if
somebody told him I was sitting here in cafeterias. You have to be very careful here,
there are acquaintances everywhere, and people gossip”.4
Anna’s moral reaction, like that of other interlocutors, unveiled a gendered map
of city spaces and urban practices marked with “moral suspicion” (Urbańska 2015).
Above all, however, it unveiled a gendered evaluation of leisure activities closely linked
to legally binding rules of displaying the identity of a migrant mother through food-
ways. e normative model of a good, committed, transnational migrant mother only
allowed my interlocutors to work for the benet of children and families: it forbade
pleasures, which were burdened with the risk of casting doubt on women’s economic
motivations. In this way during their free time, which most of my surveyed migrants
had only on Sundays (as on Saturdays most of them would work), only a “bustling
around” focused on investing in family and children was an acceptable activity. It was
in this Sunday bustling that proportionally the largest number of practices of maternal
foodways were concentrated. Firstly, it incorporated the biological regeneration activ-
ities of a migrant woman who had to demonstrate resourcefulness, self-control and
the ability to save on the food she bought and prepared. is entailed, for example,
taking public transport to often far away stores and markets, to get the cheapest
products to prepare several dishes for the whole week. is would be food intended
to be heated “on the run” between houses cleaned in dierent parts of Brussels. Sec-
ondly, this “bustling around” in parallel also included a constant looking for cheap
goods and gathering ordinary, as well as prestigious, goods or food, every now and
then sent to Poland in parcels for children and families. ere was a close relationship
between these two activities, as it was thanks to saving on their own pleasures and
aconstant restraint of eating cravings that mothers could invest in the “pleasure of
4 e interview was recorded in my ethnographic diary.

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 77
food play” (Parsons 2015) of their children and families.5 us, a displayed “bustling
around” and dedication turned the ordinary, routine labour of foodwork into emo-
tional labour (Hochschild 1983), or “love labour” (Lynch 2007). It demonstrated
acontinuity of caring commitment and mother’s love. It allowed, however, an exten-
sion beyond the boundaries of a “gender domestic sphere foodways’ order” into every-
day “banal” transnational food work and feeding the family still coded as emotional
feminized activity. It also reproduced a multidimensional hierarchy in which the
mother serves the needs of the child. us, thanks to this strategy of bustling around
foodways, women gained control and an opportunity to reverse the process of unbe-
coming amother: a process in which physical absence (non-residency) combined with
entering the hegemonic role of a breadwinner was treated as abandonment (Euro-or-
phanhood). e display of such an attitude of bustling around, and thus resourceful-
ness, economy and sacrice, in addition to practical necessity, could justify their
separation from their children and also testify to legitimate motivations to leave. We
can therefore see that the work of a migrant woman can be seen as valid, as Frances
Pine described in her aforementioned study of Polish mothers from the Podhale region
of Poland (2000). However, my research reveals another condition of this empower-
ment, in that it is only realized when there is no room for mother’s free time and
pleasure during the separation. It is expected that she should give up on herself and
make sacrices to provide the “pleasure of food play” to her child.
at is why I had to wait almost two months to record the interview with the
aforementioned Anna. We did not meet until Anna’s roommate left for Poland for
awhile, thus giving us space for a condential, intimate conversation. We could not
talk in a park, because in Brussels, just like in London, it rains all the time. In the
meantime, however, I had numerous occasions to accompany Anna and her group of
friends, as well as migrants from other groups, on their Sunday foodways’ “bustling
around” rituals, and accompanying interactions and conversations. e pattern of
only Sunday afternoon “free time” spent this way by the migrants rarely changed.
Weekly routine expeditions to the Polish Catholic Mission masses, and to special
“ethnic” call centres for migrants (Internet Cafés) with telephone booths enabling
cheaper calls to Poland, were intertwined with joint expeditions to often distant
markets for food provisions, intended for weekly consumption and carefully prepared
packages.
5 Parsons uses this term to make a distinction that women in the kitchen do labour and men food
play. “Men cooking for pleasure reinforces ‘natural’ distinctions between everyday food work car-
ried out by women and the more exciting or expert food play men enjoy in the domestic sphere”
(2015, 71); “e persistent distinctions between food play and food work contributes to the
naturalizing of women’s work within the home. Hence, ‘feeding the family’ is conceptualized as
hurried, low skilled, mundane and routinised (DeVault 1991) unlike the artistry of the epicurean,
which is not ‘work’ at all” (Parsons 2015, 22).

78 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
e Abattoir food market (Marché de l’Abattoir) was the most popular place of
weekly shopping for the Polish community, functioning in numerous stories due to
the possibility of purchasing the cheapest goods there: meat, vegetables and fruit. e
market is located in the Anderlecht district, associated with the poorer proletariat and
inhabited mainly by Polish and Arabic migrants. Although it happened that women
tired of doing all-week-long physical work did shopping at places located closer to
their apartments, the trip to l’Abattoir saved most money, because it made it possible
both to buy food at reduced prices and to “collect” food (forced freeganism). anks
to the joint expeditions to the market, I had a chance to observe embodied practices,
which some of the interviewees either did not reect on in interviews or were simply
ashamed to admit to. Many of the products the women obtained were strategically
won a quarter of an hour before the market closed, when sellers sold cardboard boxes
with leftover goods for a few euros. ese usually contained damaged, unattractive
in appearance and overripe tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, various types of cabbage
and lettuce, and bananas, as well as the fruit and vegetables which remained unsold.
Women often strategically planned to arrive at the market an hour before closing: this
was the time when prices for goods would fall sharply and it was possible to bargain
for the last boxes. It was also a popular practice to collect fruit and vegetables left and
scattered, after sellers left the market. e use of such strategies of resourcefulness was
also suggested to me when an interlocutor during my research in Podlasie warned me,
as a PhD student, about the high cost of living in Belgium. Some of my interviewees
directly admitted, with a mixture of pride and embarrassment, that thanks to these
time-consuming and somewhat shameful, but “justied” strategies, they were not
only able to survive the economically dicult periods in exile, but above all, they
could save more so that they could send more home.
e repertoire of this type of sacrice, which made it possible to save on food and
the high costs of living in Brussels, was indeed much broader. It was common practice
to buy the cheapest products in the cheapest supermarkets and social shops (“look
for products marked with one”), or to eat meals, whenever possible with patrons6, as
well as to take individual products from their pantry (for example, onions, or two
carrots for a soup).7 ere were also situations, although probably less common, when
migrant women admitted that they or their friends used an eatery for the homeless.
6 Economic female migrants in Belgium referred to their female employers as “patronesses”, from the
French patron.
7 e interviewees did not use the term “theft”: rather they referred to the categories of resourceful-
ness, ingeniousness or cunning– categories positively associated with socialist resourcefulness in the
case of an economy of shortages. Migrant women more often spoke about this type of practice in
ageneralised manner; however, several of my key female informants explicitly admitted to this type
of practice.

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 79
ey also often explained that this happened in the rst stage of migration, when
salaries were lowest and other cheaper life strategies not yet discovered. Many migrant
women also brought as much relatively cheaper food as possible from Poland, most
often in the form of dry, long-term provisions: groats, pasta, canned meat and sh,
homemade smoked and cured meats, homemade marinades and ready meals, usually
meat, in jars. It is important to note that this food was often prepared during “holi-
days” in Poland (on several occasions, I transported such packages from my interloc-
utors’ children/husbands). During this time, migrant women would make double
supplies of homemade food: both for themselves for their time abroad and supplies
of “motherly food” for children, suitably portioned, frozen and bottled. In the case
of women from the countryside, these undertakings were often connected with order-
ing half carcasses of a piglet. is multi-sided bustling around crossed borders, and
time-consuming foodways’ display could also be used during stays in Poland to legit-
imize the image of separation in terms of sacrice and time beyond the principle
ofpleasure.
In addition to the fact that for many workers these foodways’ practices were moti-
vated primarily by economic necessity, and thus were a survival strategy, the reection
and displaying of this embodied sacrice and “bustling around” was also a coping
strategy, which could easily be qualied as a strategy of resistance. is mainly con-
cerned those groups of migrants who did not circulate in the several-month system
(in a popular rhythm of three months in Belgium, three months in Poland), because
they worked permanently abroad. Usually, these were distant mothers for whom
migration following the opening of borders after 1989 opened the only available path
for marital separation, and the possibility of divorce or preparation for it. For many
of these women from the working class, the migration option was the only available
form of escape from domestic violence, sometimes one advised by helpless represent-
atives of institutions (police). It was also a way of dealing with the conservative ten-
dency, rooted in Polish Catholicism, to normalize and invalidate domestic violence,
and a related pressure to stay in marriage despite problems (Urbańska 2015).
e mothers in this group were the most threatened by the process of (un)becoming
mothers, as they dared to change and confront the normative expectations of self-sac-
ricing, of the need to be an altruistic, asexual wife and mother (a “Polish Mother”,
see Hryciuk, Korolczuk 2012). In addition, by emancipating themselves abroad, they
sooner or later tried to use their newly acquired and hard-earned economic independ-
ence and the liberal moral context to shape their lives anew, on their own terms.
Women in this group might therefore look for romantic relationships, pleasure, sexual
fullment and also another marriage, although equally some, discouraged by the latter
formula, decided on civil partnerships/unions inaccessible and invalid in conservative
Poland (Urbańska 2015). ese women were the most aected by the context of sus-
picion, of a failure to recognize and questioning of the status of mother, as well as by

80 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
the stigmatization strategies widespread in the migration environment. eir presence
introduced a moral anxiety about the impact of the pattern of their migration (and
emancipation) on the morality of Polish women (especially wives and mothers).
Itincreased mutual control and distrust, generated gossip and moral judgements and
divided the migration environment.
Recognizing this group of subversive mothers and the tension-ridden diversity of
the migrant women of working classes in general allowed me to understand why Anna
and other economic migrants refused being invited for coee and cake so strongly.
And, consequently, why they felt compelled to explain to me their identity, in which
the major point of reference was sacrice through the (display of) foodways and the
principle of being cut o from the sphere of pleasure. Paradoxically, however, the
pattern of displaying maternal bustling around foodways was even more strongly
represented in “subversive” mothers, with whom, for a change, I was free to talk in
cafés (they accepted invitations also to bars; some invited me to a dance) and in their
homes (they usually rented small studios themselves). For example, Barbara, Wanda
and Aldona were such mothers for whom, at rst, forced economic migration coin-
cided with the experience of separation, divorce and ghting for children and their
upkeep. At the same time, it also entailed a process of arranging romantic life, on
dierent principles and from scratch. For Barbara, Wanda and Aldona, each of whom
in exile sooner or later was in a (not always constant) relationship with someone,
showing sacrice and “bustling around” foodways was the most eective “weapon of
the weak” or strategy of bargaining with patriarchy.
e women in this group performed practically the same practices as economic
migrants, with the dierence that they performed them more intensively. ey also
paid more attention to the interactive communication of embodied sacrices: especially
when they negotiated/bargained their image of a mother tight-roping between hard
work, physical absence in their children’s homes, the commitment of a mother and
nally the right to have their own romantic life. For example, Barbara used to send
her daughter living in a dorm “homemade food prepared from scratch” (see: Parsons
2015) at regular intervals. is would be the daughter’s favourite veal stew or stued
cabbage, usually packed in jars, or portioned breaded cutlets. During the conversation
we had at her house, Barbara showed me a blue, portable, plastic fridge with a handle,
in which jars and frozen chops rode 12–16 hours by camionette from Brussels (stationed
between Hôtel des Monnaies and Louise) to Poznań at a price of 20–30 euros. More-
over, she told me with undisguised satisfaction that her dishes were appreciated by
her daughter’s friends from the dormitory and that she, as a mother, provoked admi-
ration with these practices. For Barbara, homemade food became a more eective
form of showing aection and motherly love and care than the important, but not as
strong symbol of motherly love, alienated money (see Patzer 2018; Camposano 2018).
“Food not only nourishes but signies” (Fischler 1988, 276), hence the packed jars

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 81
and frozen foods are real “weapons of the weak”. Barbara tries to send much more so
that her daughter can oer (and display) this supranational “love of her mother” to
her friends. Although not all my long-term interlocutors could aord such practices
for nancial and family reasons, Barbara could, because she had only one daughter
in a big city well connected to Brussels. Despite such restrictions, virtually every
mother reected and displayed in her interactions with children, family and social
circles embodied foodways’ practices of bustling around and sacrice.
Wanda, who as a cleaner tried to maintain two households, one for herself in
Brussels and that of her four children in the care of her mother-in-law in Poland, was
unable to send packages. Instead, she regularly sent all the money she put aside to
support her family to her mother-in-law, who had moved to Wanda’s apartment and
retired early to look after her granddaughters. Wanda explained to her daughters that
she was not able to earn enough working as a cleaner and babysitter to send extra items
in packages. She explained that even buying a bar of chocolate for everyone in Poland
was too much of a burden for her tight budget. And when her relatives in Poland did
not trust her explanations, because they still encountered a strong post-socialist rep-
resentation of migrants and their families as living in luxury, then Wanda tried to
display to her family her living conditions and her complex food survival strategies in
a context of illegality in Brussels. In order to gain the support of her teenage daughters,
provoked into rebellion by their violent father, she confessed to them that she collected
scattered vegetables from markets, used an eatery for the homeless and had tried
unsuccessfully to ask for nancial help and accommodation in Polish Catholic Mis-
sions. She also admitted that at a time when her only job was night care for a sick
elderly lady (she was only employed at night), to save on the cost of renting an apart-
ment, she remained homeless for several months. is was a period when she would
leave her suitcase behind the counter with a befriended shop assistant, and spend days
walking around the city looking for work and social meals. When, after many years,
she allowed herself to have a romantic relationship with a migrant from Congo, the
initial resistance of her daughters and the moral accusations of her mother’s identity
were negotiated with the argument that a hardworking worker, “scrubbing someone
else’s toilet on her knees every day, deserves pleasure”. So Wanda not only rejected the
“migration lie” strategy (Sayad 2004), she also bargained with Polish patriarchy, using
the hegemonic pattern of a Polish Mother’s dedication to lead to its subversion through
her own path of individualisation and sexual emancipation.
Although at rst glance these strategies could be interpreted in terms of (re)tradi-
tionalization, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, we are dealing here with
a process of becoming a postmodern mother in a working class migrant’s version. Asim-
ilar pattern of reective, strategic transformation of symbolic capital owing from guard-
ianship and transnational bustling around into legitimizing family identities in the
process of emancipation was also strongly rooted in the practices of the other migrants.

82 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
GATEKEEPING OR LACK OF ROLE REVERSAL?
TRANSNATIONAL MANAGERIALISM
Another dimension of “transnational maternal foodways” practices was that of man-
aging food and feedwork in a household stretched across borders. In the new circum-
stances, these practices took the form of transnational (virtual) management. e
women tried to maintain their position of pre-departure food gatekeepers (Radclie
and Weismantel 1990; Stoller 1989, 15–22; McIntosh and Zey 2003) and despite the
distance they continued to monitor, organize, delegate and control various aspects
of veryday family foodways. ey had a major impact on the overall management of
food provision and family meals (mealtimes) and, above all, on the organisation
oftheir replacement in this area and attempts to control the quality of food provision.
Moreover, thanks to the material capital acquired through work abroad, their position
as foodway gatekeepers, and thus their position of power, would often strengthen.
Such a situation did not result only from coercion connected with rarely successful
role reversals with fathers. e desire to maintain inuence and control over the process
of unbecoming mother was also important.
First of all, women tried to virtually monitor and participate in everyday family
meals. I learned about this not only during interviews and free time spent with
migrants or their families in Poland. is was also conrmed by covert observations
that I conducted in low-cost “parlours” (term used by respondents) for Polish migrants
in the multi-ethnic, Saint-Gilles district popular among female workers. I regularly
used several Internet café points besieged mainly by migrants from Podlasie. ere,
while writing up my diary, I could at the same time hear spontaneous conversations
leaking out of the booths. Similar results were obtained each time for several hours
of observations carried out on buses on the Siemiatycze-Brussels route and on the
way back. Food was a constant topic of telephone conversations with children and
families. Migrant women asked about daily menus, which they helped to plan, sug-
gested recipes and taught children to cook. In the course of the talks, they expressed
concern about the appropriate diet of individual family members, as well as all kinds
of nutritional concerns. ey also tried to monitor the rhythms of the day, e.g. cor-
recting the right time for family meals in Poland. is was an important form of
building everyday intimacy, as well as showing proper gender engagement from the
limited set of possibilities available in virtual space.
e second type of transnational management practices was the organisation
offood and feedwork substitution in Poland, including monitoring its quality. epat-
terns regulating who will replace the mother in the kitchen and when, reveal ethno-
-local gender norms, as well as the women’s access to various types of local networks,
local community institutions, and nancial resources. Women rarely talk about full
role reversal, where the responsibility for family foodways is taken over by the father.

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 83
e prevailing pattern is one where the main responsibility for food and feedwork is
transferred on the basis of nominations of other women (cf. Parreñas 2001; 2005;
Carling, Cecilia Menjivar and Schmalzbauer 2012, 5). ese are primarily (1) older
daughters or mothers-in-law, as well as relatives (sisters, aunts) associated with family
responsibilities.
An important role, especially in rural communities, is also played by (2) women
from the nearest neighbourhood or local community (friends, close neighbours).
Here, however, the organisation of the replacement takes place not on the basis of
nomination or use of related relationships: rather, it is largely grounded in a rural,
self-help institution strongly rooted in women’s practices (see Szpak 2013). An inter-
esting example of using both strategies, despite the strong commitment of fathers, is
the case of Danuta (2 children) and Jagoda (3 children). ese two economic migrants
are neighbours in a small town in the east of Poland and, at the same time, each other’s
substitutes. ey exchange work with the same employers in the system of 3 months
cleaning in Belgium and 3 months vacation in Poland. In each household, the respon-
sibility for food and feedwork is taken over by fathers and daughters. Additionally,
during the absence of each of the neighbours, her substitute helps her friend’s full-time
working husband by organizing care and meals during his absence (hours on duty at
work, short trips). She invites children for dinners, oers them cake and drops o
shopping and agricultural produce brought from gardens and from families from
surrounding villages. At the same time, the women remain in constant telephone
touch with each other, managing their households, and arranging purchases and
deliveries at a distance (e.g. ordering eggs, half-carcases of piglets, etc). An additional
support for both families is the retired older sister of Jagoda’s mother. She often helps
out in the care of the children of both neighbouring households in exchange for
numerous gifts and nancial help that she accepts with resistance because of family
relations. e households of the two women are thus connected by a complex network
of mutual relations crossing national borders: relations managed virtually by both
women, and including networks of close and further women. Interestingly enough,
this popular coping strategy is not based on the codied care chain (cf. Parreñas 2001;
2005; Hochschild 2001; Lutz 2018) so common in other parts of the world. Rather,
we are dealing here with the use of ethno-local patterns (see Radziwinowiczówna,
Rosińska, Kloc-Nowak 2018), based on a complex network of bartering. ey are
governed by gendered expectations: the women know who should help in what situ-
ations and to whom this help should be oered. Commodication does not replace
this pattern, but rather serves to complement it.
e other side of this circulating network of barter favours are conicts, tensions
and various types of hierarchies of inequalities that are formed in close relations. ey
are the result of a failure to renegotiate the gender contract with the partner and the
overload of the gendered roles of women. An interesting example is the case of

84 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
theformer farmer Aldona, a forced economic emigrant and mother of 2 children,
who emancipated in the process of migration from a violent relationship with her
husband and in-laws. Aldona’s husband did not take up any paid work, he neglected
farming and childcare, engaging instead in the grass-root politics of the conservative
Samoobrona party active at that time.8 roughout the whole period, he exploited his
wife nancially, who became the only breadwinner of the family, forcing her to prolong
her work abroad and to part with her children. What is more, during Aldona’s stay
abroad, he did not take care of the children, completely ceding care work to his mother,
relatives and a neighbour, a friend of his wife. Until her divorce, which preceded the
bringing of her younger daughter abroad, Aldona had been trying to manage her care
at a distance through several years of separation. She regularly sent food packages, set
up her contacts in the village and organised a network of fresh food purchases delivered
straight to her home. Twice a week, a befriended bread courier brought home fresh
buns, bread and dairy products for breakfast. roughout her absence, food and
feedwork– in exchange for friendship and gifts– was organized by Aldona’s friend,
who is also her neighbour. e friend cleaned the house, paid the bills, did shopping
and regularly invited the children for home-cooked meals. Aldona’s strategy was there-
fore based on transnational management of foodways and the use of gendered, local
rules for supporting women and families, wherein a large role is played by the insti-
tution of rural neighbourhood self-help. In addition, Aldona practiced “maternal
bustling around foodways”, regularly sending parcels that change content during the
course of her process of emancipation (unbecoming wife). At the instigation of Belgian
employers whom she told about her marital problems, Aldona over time turned the
initial nancial transfers exclusively into gifts (food, household chemicals, clothes for
children). is allowed Aldona to take control over her family’s consumption and
stop her husband from wasting her hard-earned money.
Aldona, like other migrants, also interweaves regular home visits in her manage-
ment strategy. During her stays, she replenishes food in the pantry, cooks and freezes
meals for the next few weeks, prepares and portions semi-nished products (chops)
and makes preserves. Krystyna, an economic migrant and mother of 2 children, also
mentions such a strategy of serving her family and husband in emergency situations,
as did Aldona and other women. When one of Aldona, or Krystyna’s children gets
sick (a high fever), they negotiate a few days’ holiday with their employer and go home
for a dozen or so hours by camionette to watch over and cook their home broth
(mother’s homemade food as part of folk medicine, see Mroczkowska 2014). Strate-
giesof transnational management, and at the same time the status, position and
identity of the mother, are reinforced here by regular visits and work in the territorial
8 e Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland is a Polish conservative-agrarian political party founded
in 1991.

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 85
space of the home. Some of the women decide to move the location of their workplace
to a place closer to their home towns. ey move from Belgium to Germany: all this,
in order to be able to commute home at weekends or twice a month. An additional
interesting possibility is to intertwine local institutions with these strategies. For
instance, older children (secondary school level) may be moved to Catholic boarding
schools, which provide adequate care and boarding in canteens during school days,
and thus relieve fathers and supporting women from excessive responsibilities, as
especially arise in the case of families of mothers with many children.
LOVE BOX: FOOD CHOICE AS A FOOD VOICE
“For many women (and some men), food is a signicant voice of self-expression.
Inthe meals they cook, the rituals they observe, and the memories they preserve,
women communicate powerful meanings and emotions” (Counihan 2012, 174).
epackages around which migrants are constantly bustling, and the selection of
their content, constitute an important practice of constructing and renegotiating the
mother’s new identity. e selection of a package, or food choice– in emigration
conditions– is part of prestige related social messages (Camposano 2018; Levitt 1998;
Patzer 2018). By becoming a gift, it turns into a food voice (Counihan 2012).
First of all, for a mother who needs to reconstruct her role in terms of distance
and a context of suspicion, this gift involves the expression (voice) of emotional con-
tinuity and commitment. With the help of packages, mothers develop a kind of
intimacy code. e package becomes a measure of the status of relationships, which
is why all changes in their content and the routines of their dispatch are noticed and
interpreted. What matters here is both their content, size and the frequency of deliv-
eries, but also the context and time of sending them, because in the sending commu-
nities the parcels are expected to be inscribed in the life events of family members,
such as birthdays, anniversaries and festive cycles. Second, through packages mothers
often try to construct a new (class) social position and power. Food choice expresses
the class aspirations of migrant women and is perceived in such categories in a supra-
national community. ese two dimensions, maternal commitment and status, are
in fact closely linked. erefore, the package becomes a form of establishing a new
status of mothers as “successful providers”, i.e. a kind of transnational intensive mother
in the working class (see: “intensive mothering”, Hays 1996; and “transnational inten-
sive motherhood”, Parreñas 2001). is specic “food voice” becomes an active trans-
formation of access to economic capital into constructing the identity of a “good
mother” in the family and in the community. us, it is a kind of simultaneous
displayof commitment, health care, parenting and pampering the child, as well as
adisplay of class mobility.

86 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
is is why packages contain not only “home cooked meals” or “mother-made
food”, but above all prestigious food. e latter was composed primarily of foodstus
more dicult to access in the countryside or small towns in the rst decades after
1989, namely exotic fruits such as oranges, coconuts, melons and kiwi, and spices and
nuts. e most important of these, however, were sweets, and to be more precise,
Belgian chocolates known all over the world: pralines (so-called “mussels”), chocolate
bars, multi-packs of candy bars and brown sugar that was still unknown or not very
popular in Poland at the time. ese products are mentioned on both sides of the
border, by mothers and by the adult children with whom I had the opportunity to
talk. ese items were also chosen for various types of barter favours. Moreover, it is
striking that while it was these particular foodstus that were packed most often,
many migrant women at the same time expressed a great distance to other Western
foods. Belgian bread, meat or vegetables were usually described in opposition to
“homely”, Polish and rural food, as more expensive and worse, because they were less
tasty.9 ese products also construct new patterns of taste and demonstrate mothers
as successful providers by providing food: (1) not available in children’s homes; (2)una-
vailable to the average budget; (3) known for their nutritional values; or (4) unique
taste qualities.
Food packages were also important signs saturated in a multitude of meanings in
the family and sending community. I have participated in sending and receiving
packages many times. I was asked to transport them, I delivered them and participated
in their unpacking, criticism or armation. ese were usually single, bigger bags.
ey were not large, as is the case of the balikbayan boxes widely known in migration
literature travelling on a ship sailing for weeks from the USA to the Philippines (see
Patzer 2018). On the other side of the border, in Poland, packages also had their place
in the social imagination. My interlocutors (fathers and children) were waiting for
packages: the whole family would go to the nearest town (to the international bus
station) to pick them up. Receiving a package was an important social event, it initiated
various types of social gatherings and associated exchange of gifts or barters (usually
of sweets). Packages generated emotions and moral narratives: they were spoken about
in the immediate vicinity and recognized as proof of sacrice and dedication. e
sender’s nearest and dearest noticed resourcefulness, care and individualized memory:
a remembering of the tastes, preferences and favourite avours of family members.
ey assessed or criticized the mother’s eort and choices, or the sense of her work
abroad. e packages were also a third (non-human) actor in negotiating the mother’s
identity and the sense of her departure with her children and other adult family
members. ey were also an instrument of power. Having realized that her husband
9 To prove this thesis, migrants gave examples of the products for which Belgians shopped in Polish
stores in Brussels: these included, among others, challah.

WEAPONS OF THE WEAK TWISTED IN JARS OF LOVE… 87
did not care for her children properly and that he would spend the money she sent
to him on his love aairs, Aldona stopped sending cash. Instead, she started sending
dierent items in packages. Other women do the same. Paradoxically, therefore, depar-
ture does not always weaken the position of the mother: sometimes it even strengthens
it because of the access to nancial resources and the power to distribute them, that
it aords (see: Patzer 2018; Camposano 2018). In absentia, some of the women would
gain more capital for gatekeeping.
CONCLUSIONS
I will now return to the key questions posed at the beginning of the article. Arewe
dealing with social change in the area of transnational mothers’ gendered practices
and identities? What do the food and foodway patterns of Polish transnational migrant
mothers from working classes tell us about these experiences?
At rst glance, the answer to this question seems unequivocal. It could be phrased
as follows: as a result of migration, in the families of transnational mothers it is dicult
to come across patterns of successful role reversal and transnational mothers continue
to follow, or even enact with greater intensity, traditional patterns of food- and feed-
work. ey do this on their own and/or with the help of a network of close female
relatives and friends. Such an interpretation would be dicult to refute in the light
of the ethnographic and narrative data I collected. For these demonstrate a ubiquity
of transnational care activities carried out by women: a constant bustling around, even
at a great distance from the family home. ey also bear witness to numerous moral
restrictions (of control and suspicion) regarding free time and ubiquitous pressures
on the display of maternal respect and self-sacrice, also self-enforced by migrants
themselves. An attractive thesis on retraditionalization would also t well into a con-
temporary trend of international research, which focuses on showing bipolar directions
of gender change in particular areas– unfortunately usually presented separately and
fragmentarily– such as work, intimacy, religion and care (see Urbańska 2018).
However, I do not intend to stop at this interpretation of retraditionalization.
AsIhave shown in the analysis, looking at the experiences of migrant women becomes
more complicated when, rst of all, we recognise and incorporate their complexity
into the study. It is, after all, dicult to analyse separately the changes taking place in
particular areas of life: changes in care are closely related to changes in work, intimate
life (relationships, sexuality), and attitudes towards oneself. Secondly, the experiences
of migrant women will not appear so unilateral when we recognise and incorporate
into our interpretations the intersectional location of their practices: a dimension which
is so important in the study of gender patterns, care and family life. e women
I focused on in my study not only joined the European ranks of a migrational

88 SYLWIA URBAŃSKA
illegalproletariat in Brussels. As working class members of the population, women
from villages and small towns, second-class citizens deprived of protection against
violence or mothers stigmatized by a discourse about Euro-orphanage, these women
suered multiple exclusions both in Poland and abroad. It was in relation to this specic
social and economic context that they had to transform their family practices and
identities. ey also transformed them within a specic transnational migration com-
munity, combining new gender patterns in the Polish diaspora in Belgium with the
communities that exported women’s work. is network has developed many new
gender patterns of moral control and suspicion in response to postmodern social change.
If we take into account these contexts, it is better to risk the claim that we are
dealing here not so much with re-traditionalization, as with the development of
apostmodern working class motherhood. First of all, mothers become breadwinners,
trying to combine work with a new form of transnational (virtual) motherhood in
their communities. What is more, some of them include in their migration trajectories
the option unavailable in their communities of an emancipatory process of becoming
an ex-wife and non-resident mother, and then entering into modern forms of second
relationships. Second, in such an unfavourable context it is dicult to identify the
entire “transnational maternal foodways” described here, or what I call “maternal
bustling around foodways”, simply with the notion of re-traditionalization. Rather,
these practices are causative coping strategies, or strategies of workers’ resistance to
neoliberal uprooting mechanisms or violence. ey are also a form of management
of the trajectory of unbecoming a mother: a construction of relations and at the same
time astruggle for social recognition in spite of the ubiquitous context of suspicion.
From the perspectives of a transmigrant woman, it is not the issue of a choice of
motherhood style, but a ght for the right to motherhood, to mothering that is in
jeopardy in atransnational era. e women I focused on in my study strategically
bargained with patriarchy in order to maintain continuity. e image of the Polish
Mother (see Hryciuk and Korolczuk 2012) returns here, but in a new strategic guise.
In many cases, it now accompanies emancipatory processes not only in the area of
work, but also in the area of relationships or sexuality. Ethnography, therefore, does
not allow for simplication.
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AUTHOR’S CONTACT:
Sylwia Urbańska
Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw
E-mail: urbanskas@is.uw.edu.pl
ORCID: 0000-0002-5632-8043