ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 explores the emotional, relational, and social dimensions of migrant motherhood. Drawing out the mothers’ experiences of isolation, friendship, homesickness, guilt, failure, and disconnection, the chapter explores how these emotions are seen as barriers to feeling ‘at home’ in Australia. Participating in migrant maternal online communities helps them not necessarily to overcome these emotions but to contextualise them and reconcile them with the possibility of belonging. The chapter explores how the online groups facilitate different modes of sociality, from casual intimacy, through intermediate ties, to heartfelt friendship. These social relations enable migrant mothers to explain and explore their emotions in relation to migration and motherhood. Key concepts of relational settlement, affective settlement, and migrant maternal sociality are defined and explored.
