When a mother flees with a baby in her arms, it is often not a choice but an urgent necessity—a response to the natural maternal instinct to protect. Many mothers have had to escape totalitarian regimes or dictatorships, turning motherhood into an act of resistance. Not all mothers migrate in search of economic dreams; some do it out of fear of prison or disappearance. They migrate in search of life.

This is a forced journey in which children’s childhoods are put on hold—without a stable home, without a permanent school where they can make lifelong friends, without routines, without toys—or only a few, often broken—amid a long wait they do not understand.

Children grow up without a room of their own, without their name on the door. They learn to sleep hearing strange noises and cling tightly to their mothers when someone shouts. Mothers feel guilt for being in a situation they never chose. To mother in exile is to raise children with a heart in constant suspense. These mothers have learned that no matter how much one plans a life, tragedies can happen, and protecting their children becomes the only priority.

The challenge of protecting their children in exile

Being a mother in exile is sleeping with your eyes closed and your soul on high alert. Shelters are not always safe. Sometimes, they are shared spaces filled with strangers—other broken or desperate people—with little privacy or too much noise. Every night is a silent prayer for rest instead of fear.

Migrant mothers build nests where there is no solid ground. They improvise cradles with blankets, turn backpacks into pillows, and wait for their children to fall asleep before allowing themselves to rest. They can never let their guard down.

They are also nurses, shields for their children, and often their own legal advocates. Care becomes a daily battle. And still, they manage: they soothe and sing lullabies to calm fears. They have no books to read bedtime stories, so they invent them, striving to let their children remain children, free from the weight of exile.

Among women themselves, sometimes there is no refuge. The thin walls of shelters accumulate tension, and other mothers are not always a source of comfort. On the contrary, some feel the need to compete, and coexistence turns into a quiet war full of hurtful gestures, hostile words, and jealousies that come from places where understanding should reside. Motherhood in exile becomes even more lonely—without friends, without family, without a tribe to offer a hand when exhaustion sets in.

^{Uprooting, uncertainty, and waiting} 

Uprooting begins the moment a mother leaves her home behind. She walks away from a place that was once filled with joy, but has become too dangerous to keep dreaming in. It begins when she lifts her child from the crib, leaves behind the grandmother, and the language she once spoke every day.

Everything once ordinary becomes the past in an instant. The future that follows is one where uncertainty makes it impossible to plan, where there are no promises. Older children of migrant mothers experience this uprooting with pain and confusion—a mix of nostalgia they cannot name and a forced maturity that comes too soon.

Then comes the waiting—days that stretch into months—for an appointment, an interview, or a decision. Life turns into a limbo, like walking on a tightrope every day. No progress, no planning—just survival, while childhood keeps moving forward, unstoppably.

Migrant mothers try to create stability amid unpredictability, even as they battle the anxiety of having no control. This quiet effort deserves recognition and protection. These mothers perform small miracles: they hang drawings on bare walls to warm up cold institutional spaces and make them feel like home.

They turn boxes into tables, make castles from bedsheets, and sing new songs when the old ones feel too heavy. Even if everything around them is temporary, one thing remains permanent: a mother’s love.

^{The youngest also migrate: realities the system ignores}

The youngest also migrate. They are not just "companions" to their mothers, nor a footnote in their case file. They are people—with fears, individual needs, and stories of their own.
When children are in transit, they often talk and laugh less, play less. 

Some experience delays in learning, language, or social development—not only because of the trauma they carry, but also due to the lack of stimulation in proper educational environments, especially when growing up in a country that speaks a language different from their mother tongue.

The marks of migration are not always visible, but many young children suffer from sleep disturbances, anxiety, developmental regression, and a constant fear of the unknown—worsened by frequent moves between shelters.

Many children live their entire childhood in shelters, between transfers, offices, and bureaucratic procedures, with toys that fit in a single bag and no stable space for their growth. They are the ones who most urgently need safety, protection, and a future.
Mothers do everything possible—and often the impossible—but raising children in exile, without support, takes a toll on their children too. It is not just hunger or cold that causes emotional wounds, but prolonged instability and the deep sense of not belonging.

This is why asylum policies must view migrant children with dignity—because every child who migrates carries a story, no matter how short, that is not free of pain. And each of them holds a promise for the future that must not be left on hold.