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Current discourses in Belgian politics about Moroccan Muslim women are deeply rooted in the first-generation family reunification policies of the 1960s. Today, (marriage) migrant women are still commonly described as victims of their 'backward' religious traditions and in need of protection for the sake of themselves, their children and society. Looking at the implications of these views for the women concerned, this article discusses the unique docufilm 'When Mom Left for Mars', which documents the life narrative of a first-generation Moroccan woman in The Netherlands. Based on this docufilm, we aim to (1) document how Belgian and Dutch first-generation migrant women can be compared with each other using Karl Mannheim's 'theory of generations' and (2) engage in an intergenerational conversation with first-generation mothers and their daughters, as well as with mid-generation mothers, to gain more insight into their similarities, heritage and differences. More specifically, we explore the agency of these mothers using the analytical lens of 'affective citizenship', particularly attending to how they centralise mothering and care work to negotiate gender and belonging, and counter the challenges of marriage migration, motherhood and integration. The docufilm is, thus, used as a case study from which we consider the first-generation women as 'cultural archives', and as a methodological tool in facilitating in-depth interviews and group discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of marriage migration, women are believed to be held back or constrained by their husbands, family and religion from integrating and partaking in (regular) citizenship and Dutch courses, which denies their agency as both wives and citizens. Additionally, their personal choice to become mothers is believed to exacerbate their position as passive citizens: becoming a mother supposedly leaves little time to invest in integration courses, especially since day-care services are an important threshold. As these representations and policies are often not based on rigorous research that consults these migrant women, this research aims to fill this gap by bringing together the gendered representations and policy views on marriage migration, and lived experiences and desires as articulated by migrant women themselves. Another aim is to find out how exactly Moroccan migrant women navigate these structures as affective migrant mothers, and the role of religion in this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration policies and citizenisation programmes tend to have narrow conceptions of 'good' citizenship and are often articulated alongside specific assumptions regarding different migrant groups. This study draws on the qualitative research of a unique citizenisation pilot programme in Flanders, Belgium. The programme offered the combination of language courses, citizenisation and education support, and specifically targeted low literate migrant mothers from a non-EU background. Our analysis reveals the discrepancies between dominant discourses about integration and citizenisation and the participants' own views and experiences. We found that the government-subsidised local programme primarily focused on the mothers' citizenship in terms of linguistic and cultural integration, while the women themselves mostly endorsed an affective citizenship as mothers, wives and community members, by centralising mothering and care work. Furthermore, the programme oscillated between paternalism and support, visible in discourses of 'need' and 'empowerment'. And finally, the mothers' agency to navigate between the programme's objectives and their own were dependent on their intersectional positionings; the more literate and the longer their residence in the host society, the more critical they were regarding the programme's agenda. Based on these findings, some empirically obtained directives for future citizenisation programmes are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]