When Cameroonian women migrate to Germany, they expect a different obstetric experience than they would have met in Cameroon. They bemoan the loss of family support, but do not yearn for village midwives. These largely urban, educated women expect better and more easily accessible medical care, free of the shortages and corruption plaguing Cameroon's public health system. Their expectations-that bearing children is medically easier but socially harder than in Cameroon-are shaped by obstetrical stories circulating among their fellow migrants. Most migrant mothers celebrate the medicalisation, thoroughness, and even bureaucratic tracking, of German perinatal health care. In contrast, German healthcare providers draw from two models imagining their African clients' obstetric concerns and desires. Some combine a Western feminist critique of biomedicine with dehumanising stereotypes of Africans as 'nature-near.' Imagining that African women find highly regulated, medicalized German perinatal care alienating, these providers assume that their African clients have witnessed births in rural settings and share broad female knowledge of 'natural' childbirth. Other providers differentiate among African clients by nationality and education level to assess their comfort regarding medicalized prenatal and obstetric care. Cameroonian migrant mothers and German medical humanitarians confirm, reconfigure, and transform stereotypes of each other's obstetric desires.
Keywords: Cameroon; Germany; Obstetrics; cultural misrecognition; migration.