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Most considerations of daughtering and mothering take for granted that the subjectivities of mothers and daughters are negotiated in contexts of physical proximity throughout daughters' childhoods. Yet many mothers and daughters spend periods separated from each other, sometimes across national borders. Globally, an increasing number of children experience life in transnational families. This paper examines the retrospective narratives of four women selected from a larger corpus who were serial migrants as children (whose parents migrated before they did). It focuses on their accounts of the reunion with their mothers and how these fit with the ways in which they construct their mother–daughter relationships. We take a psychosocial approach by using a psychoanalytically informed reading of these narratives to acknowledge the complexities of the attachments produced in the context of migration and to attend to the multi-layered psychodynamics of the resulting relationships. The paper argues that serial migration positioned many of the daughters in a conflictual emotional landscape from which they had to negotiate 'strangerhood' in the context of sadness at leaving people to whom they were attached in order to join their mothers (or parents). As a result, many were resistant to being positioned as daughters, doing daughtering and being mothered in their new homes.

In the context of the second Gulf war and US and the British occupation of Iraq, many 'old' debates about the category 'woman' have assumed a new critical urgency. This paper revisits debates on intersectionality in order to show that they can shed new light on how we might approach some current issues. It first discusses the 19th century contestations among feminists involved in anti-slavery struggles and campaigns for women's suffrage. The second part of the paper uses autobiography and empirical studies to demonstrate that social class (and its intersections with gender and 'race' or sexuality) are simultaneously subjective, structural and about social positioning and everyday practices. It argues that studying these intersections allows a more complex and dynamic understanding than a focus on social class alone. The conclusion to the paper considers the potential contributions to intersectional analysis of theoretical and political approaches such as those associated with post-structuralism, post-colonial feminist analysis, and diaspora studies.

This article aims to contribute to the currently sparse literature on transnational families and gender. It focuses on the retrospective accounts of Caribbean-born adults who as children were serial migrants, joining their parents in the UK following a period of separation. It considers aspects of their relationships with their siblings and with their mothers and fathers. The article illuminates what the serial migrants viewed as contradictory everyday practices that produced 'non-shared environments'. It discusses three ways in which transnationalism appeared to be a central part of the serial migrants' family lives. First, it was embodied. Second, it was lived as cultural difference between Caribbean-born and UK-born siblings. Third, it was reported to be evident in parental practices. The article illustrates the importance of viewing gendered narratives in a psychosocial intersectional perspective.

This paper takes up Avtar Brah's (1999) invitation to write back to the issues she raises in her mapping of the production of gendered, classed and racialised subjectivities in west London. It addresses two topics that, together, illuminate racialised and gendered interpellation and psychosocial processes. The paper is divided into two main sections. The first draws on empirical research on the transition to motherhood conducted in east London to consider one mother's experience of giving birth in the local maternity hospital. The maternity ward constituted a site where racialised difference became salient, leading her to construct her maternal identity by asserting her difference from Bangladeshi mothers and so self-racialising, as well as 'othering' Bangladeshi mothers. The paper analyses the ways in which her biography may help to explain why her experience of the maternity hospital interpellates her into racialised positioning. The second section focuses on media responses to the riots in various English cities in August 2011. It examines the ways in which some media punditry racialised the riots and inclusion in the British postcolonial nation. The paper analyses three sets of commentaries and illuminates the ways in which they racialise the debate in essentialising ways, reproducing themes that were identified in the 1980s as 'new racism' and apportioning blame for the riots to 'black gangster culture'. While these media pronouncements focus on racialisation, they are intersectional in implicitly also invoking gender and social class. The paper argues that the understanding of the mother's self-racialisation is deepened by a consideration of the racialised discourses that can be evoked (and are contested) in periods of social unrest. The paper thus draws on part of the methodology of 'The Scent of Memory' in layering media readings and biographical narratives to analyse the contemporary psychosocial space of racialisation.

Current debates about the utility of the concept of social class for social analysis have been helpful in illuminating the shortcomings of traditional theories and traditional methods of assessment of social class. Yet, social class continues to have an important impact on life chances and worldviews. This article uses data from an interview study of 248 young Londoners (young women and men; black, white and of `mixed-parentage') to examine the place of social class in young people's lives. The young people's accounts indicated that they did not necessarily use occupational groupings in defining social class and that the majority considered themselves to be middle class. Nonetheless, social class was important to the ways in which they thought about themselves. They differentiated themselves from others on the basis of differences in lifestyle, housing, money, speech, dress and behaviour. Some disliked and/or feared people they considered to be from other social classes.

SUMMARY.Women who become mothers under the age of 20 are usually thought to he at greater risk of health and social problems. The authors argue that such a prevailing view has become institutionalised in the approaches of practitioners and researchers. They examine the ideological and factual bases of such an attitude towards teenage mothers and conclude that ideology is dominant. Suggestions are made as to how this might be overcome to allow a more balanced approach to research about young motherhood.

AbstractThis paper analyses the retrospective narratives of an adult language broker. Language brokering involved not only learning how to translate/interpret language for others, but also understanding the meaning that Spanish and English assumed in society and the ways in which she and her parents were socially positioned. Language brokering was both psychosocial and agentic. The participant had to align her respect for, and protectiveness of, her parents with the disrespect and harsh judgement she sensed from those with whom they sought to communicate in various sites. The paper illuminates the complexity of the processes of developing multilingual practices and identities in their intersectional and relational multisitedness.

Background: Besides handling the physical impacts of COVID-19 there is more than ever a need to understand what can help when mental health is challenged. Within this context our practical wisdom – our ability to understand and recognise when 'the other', for example the patient, is feeling lonely or anxious is particularly important. Aim: This article aims to contribute to the understanding of how the competence of health professionals may be advanced by helping them develop the self-understanding essential to being wise practitioners. Method: The article is based on a discussion informed by reflections (written in Danish and translated into English) by Masters students (and registered nurses) participating in a university programme "Patient and user focused nursing". Findings: The first part of the article considers a student nurse's reflection on understanding herself and one of her patients. The second part considers reflections on the contemporary world of change from a student nurse trying to engage with a world she experiences as falling apart. The third part addresses the impact of resonant places and encounters on developing self/other understandings; encounters that may also be produced through songs and lyrics. The final part draws conclusions on how it is possible to reach understandings of oneself and others as student health practitioners in time of a pandemic. Conclusion: In the process of developing understanding and recognition, competence built on self-understanding is central for helping form health professionals into 'wise practitioners'. It is concluded that the existential implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, paradoxically, may direct many people's awareness to a more sensitive, resonant, attitude towards the other. For some, this may produce a more humanized world and perception of others. Within this perspective the arts may help us develop self-understanding and recognition of 'the other'.