Multiple Lives: A Narrative Autoethnography Exploring Women’s Migration Experience

Date
2020-05-11
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Abstract
This autoethnographic research investigates my shifting positions of privilege and oppression that are part of my personal experience of global migration. Using a theoretical framework of intersectionality, this research develops a deeper understanding of my varied migratory journeys. I identify as an East African Canadian who resides in Qatar. There are women in my life, such as my mother and domestic workers in Qatar who share similar identities, yet their experiences are significantly different from mine. This observation has led me to examine current literature that links to migration experiences and experiences constructed by identities that result in oppression and privilege. My experiences rooted from my multiple identities such as, female, Canadian, Ethiopia, Eritrean, immigrant, and black continuously shift placing me in positions of being privileged or being oppressed, a phenomenon that I have refer as my multiple lives. In this autoethnography, I deconstruct my multiple lives to expose the systemic imbalance of power in society that link into my intersecting identities, which refers to how, where and which of my multiple identities intersect. Evocative story telling is used as a strategy to expose how my nursing work is enmeshed with my activist work and my moral conviction that health is a fundamental human right. The work entreats readers to develop a personal knowledge, built in relationship with my multiple lives and expose the day-to-day injustices being perpetrated within globalized migration.
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Keywords
Ethiopia, migration, Middle East, Canada, domestic workers, autoethnography, intersectionality, gender, race, nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, class, healthy immigrant effect, deskilling of immigrants, feminized migration.
Citation
Teame, D. (2020). Multiple Lives: A Narrative Autoethnography Exploring Women’s Migration Experience (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.