Navigating Marginalization: Toward Justice-Oriented Sociotechnical Design for Parent–Child Learning among Southeast Asian Immigrant Mothers in Taiwan

Paper Title

Navigating Marginalization: Toward Justice-Oriented Sociotechnical Design for Parent–Child Learning among Southeast Asian Immigrant Mothers in Taiwan

Publication Info

• Topic area: Sociotechnical design for marginalized immigrant families in non-Western contexts.
• Keywords: Southeast Asian immigrant mothers, parent-child learning, sociotechnical systems, intersectional justice, cultural marginalization, Taiwan, political economy of care, structural barriers, digital tools, family engagement.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Southeast Asian (SEA) immigrant mothers in Taiwan face structural marginalization and diminished agency, particularly in their roles as primary caregivers and educators of their children. Existing socio-technical systems fail to address their unique challenges and often reinforce their exclusion.
• Significance: Addressing these challenges is critical for fostering equitable parent-child learning environments and supporting the cultural and social integration of immigrant families in Taiwan.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research in HCI has explored parent-child learning and immigrant technology use, but it often assumes democratic household structures and focuses on short-term adaptation in Western contexts. There is limited understanding of long-settled marriage migrants in non-Western settings and their long-term socio-technical experiences.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Intersectional Justice-Oriented Design (IJOD) framework, which aligns justice-oriented design strategies with the lived realities of SEA immigrant mothers to address structural marginalization.
• Novelty:
  1. Frames the home as a political site shaped by the political economy of care and structural oppression.
  2. Identifies specific harms faced by SEA mothers, including cultural erasure, recognition harm, and emotional harm.
  3. Proposes justice-oriented design strategies for competence visibility, subversive reciprocity, and structural accountability across individual, familial, and societal levels.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted semi-structured interviews and a two-week diary study with 14 SEA immigrant mothers in Taiwan.
  • Thematic analysis of data to uncover barriers, strategies, and opportunities for socio-technical interventions.
  • Developed actionable design recommendations grounded in intersectional justice principles.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Mothers engaged in diverse learning activities, including cultural transmission (e.g., cooking, language learning), moral development, and recreational play, but struggled with academic support due to language and cultural gaps.
  • Mothers faced emotional struggles, including feelings of inadequacy, familial opposition, societal bias, and concerns about their children’s social belonging.
  • Creative, private learning moments (e.g., using fogged-up mirrors for math problems) emerged as significant coping strategies.
• Advantage over baselines: The IJOD framework moves beyond deficit-based approaches by addressing structural harms and enabling marginalized mothers to assert agency and cultural authority.
• Experiments / evaluation: Data collection included 14 participants, 78 videos, 44 audio clips, and 385 photographs, analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The study focused on long-settled SEA mothers in Taiwan with basic Mandarin proficiency.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited sample size and focus on long-settled mothers; future research should include recently arrived immigrants and broader demographics.
  • Technology alone cannot resolve systemic injustices; designs should complement broader structural reforms.

Summary

This study investigates the socio-cultural and technological challenges faced by SEA immigrant mothers in Taiwan as they engage in their children’s learning. The proposed Intersectional Justice-Oriented Design framework addresses structural harms through strategies for competence visibility, subversive reciprocity, and structural accountability. Findings highlight the mothers’ creative engagement in cultural and moral education despite systemic barriers. The framework offers actionable design directions for HCI researchers and practitioners to support marginalized caregivers and foster equitable socio-technical systems.