Babies, Bonds and Boundaries

This thesis is located at the intersection of writing on maternity and embodiment within socio-cultural and medical anthropology. A central question guiding this thesis is, how do narratives of ethnic Vietnamese women own experiences of maternity reveal both the cultural processes and social context which they construct and negotiate their identities? The author demonstrates how the life trajectories of Vietnamese women in Australia are inextricably linked to, or constructed by politics, economics, power and ethnicity.