Supporting data for Mothers Talk: Migrant Mothers in Post-War Hong Kong and Britain

List of Interviewees for Thesis titled, "Mothers Talk: Migrant Mothers in Post-War Hong Kong and Britain"

Research Project:

This thesis examines the role of Chinese migrant mothers in post-war Hong Kong and Britain, a marginalised, frequently illiterate group, and often absent from official documentation. Migrant encounters are rarely examined for what they can tell us about the experience of motherhood. This thesis attempts to follow the migration trails of Chinese female migrants and compare their lived experiences as mothers in the two host locations. The thesis draws predominantly on oral testimony, allowing the understanding of the migrant experience to not only be factual, but lived and personal. This thesis addresses a number of questions: What factors helped shape ideas of motherhood in colonial Hong Kong and Britain, and did migrants engage with these ideas? To what extent did concepts of motherhood change owing to transnational mobility, and to what extent were Chinese women able to live up to ideals of motherhood? By answering these questions, these thesis hopes to be able to explore, in more detail, the prosaic gap between colonial and British government policies, and the lives of Chinese migrant mothers. Furthermore, the research also reflects on the value of oral history in uncovering hidden histories of migration, ethnicity, community, and family.

Methodology:

Oral history, or more specifically, life story interviewing, forms the principal research method for data collection in this thesis, providing a “practical and holistic methodological approach for the sensitive collection of personal narratives that reveal how a specific human life is constructed and reconstructed.”^[1] This form of method is particularly suitable here because “interviews often reveal unknown events or unknown aspects of known events,” and “cast new light on unexplored areas of the daily life of the nonhegemonic classes.”^[2] Alongside the use of oral history, additional written sources of information, including statistical data; government, news and third sector reports; and miscellaneous other forms of documentation are also analysed to supplement the interviews collected, aiding interrogation of the topic of Chinese motherhood in the context of migration.

Participants:

In total fifty-nine individuals participated in this research. Interviews took place between November 2017 to November 2021 in Hong Kong, London, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and, after the Covid-19 outbreak in the UK in March 2020, online. Participants were recruited through a variety of means including through community centres, social media (often through participants' children), and word-of-mouth referrals. Some interviews were conducted with individuals, others with couples, their children, or entire families. Interviews were conducted in settings chosen by participants to ensure comfort and trust – these ranged from homes to dim sum restaurants, parks, cafés, and even during walks. Interview dynamics and storytelling were thus inevitably shaped by these varying settings and relationships, including the environment of each session, the types of relationships I was able to form with the participant, or whether we felt we were pressured with time.

Data files:

Cantonese was used as the primary dialect in most of the interviews, which were then translated into English for the purpose of presentation in this research. As a result, only English language transcripts are available. Due to participant confidentiality, only transcripts from interviewees who have agreed for their interviews to be archived will be permanently archived in an anonymised form, and retain for long-term use after the completion of this research. All transcripts/recordings from interviewees who specified they do not wish for their interviews to be archived and only used for this research will be erased after the completion of this research.

^[1] Robert Atkinson, “The Life Story Interview as a Mutually Equitable Relationship,” in Jaber F. Gubrium, James A. Holstein, Amir Marvasti and Karyn D. McKinney (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Interview Research: The Complexity of the Craft, Second Edition (London: SAGE Publications, 2012), p. 116.

^[2] Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (eds.), The Oral History Reader, Third Edition (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 52.