Mental load at the intersection of migration, motherhood and work

Priyanka Dwivedi, Bhavya Kapoor and Manasi Vahia

Gender, Work and Organization, 2025, vol. 32, issue 2, 800-819

Abstract: This paper investigates the narratives of Mental load (ML) within the realm of migration. The study captures the migration experiences of three Indian mother‐workers across their journey of migration. By examining the ML situated at the intersection of migration, motherhood, and paid work, our study bridges the theoretical gap at the micro level by understanding how skilled Indian mother‐workers manufacture subjectivities as they now spend their lives in Australia and Canada. We define ML in the context of migration and explore how these women navigate the newness of identity, cultural adaptation, and reframe mothering, all while juggling their ML accompanying the unfamiliarity of mobility. Further, we demonstrate how migrant mothers understand themselves diversely in relation to their careers in the new land. We find that ML ascends in the beginning of the journey. Further, the research unveils that the mother‐workers agentically modulate their ML with a clear and well‐defined migration objective as the guiding beacon in steering through the subsequent migration journey. Moreover, the absence of clarity in migration objectives substantially augments the ML. These results hold significance in the conceptualization of migration‐related ML of mother‐workers, hence offering a subjective lens to capture the everyday portrait of a migrant mother‐worker.

Date: 2025
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