Transnational parenting and the well‐being of Angolan migrant parents in Europe

Studies on the transnational family highlight the emotional difficulties of migrant parents separated from their children through international migration. This article consists of a large‐scale quantitative investigation into the insights of transnational family literature by examining the well‐being of transnational parents compared with that of parents who live with their children in the destination country. Furthermore, through a survey of Angolan migrant parents in both the Netherlands and Portugal, we compare the contexts of two receiving country. Our study shows transnational parents are worse off than their non‐transnational counterparts in terms of four measures of well‐being – health, life satisfaction, happiness, and emotional well‐being. Although studies on migrant well‐being tend to focus exclusively on the characteristics of the receiving countries, our findings suggest that, to understand migrant parents' well‐being, a transnational perspective should also consider the existence of children in the migrant sending country. Finally, comparing the same population in two countries revealed that the receiving country effects the way in which transnational parenting is associated with migrant well‐being.     

Reconsidering the role of the digital in global production networks

Global production networks (GPNs) have become a key framework in conceptualizing linkages, power and structure in globalized production. However, this framework has been less successful in integrating the influence of digital information and ICTs in production, and this problematic in a world where relationships and power are increasingly mediated by digital information flows and resources. We thus look to adapt the GPN framework to allow more substantive analysis of ‘the digital’. Primarily, this is done through a theoretical analysis of the three core categories of the GPN framework – embeddedness, value and networks – to highlight how these categories can better integrate a more dynamic and contested conceptualization of the digital. Illustrations from research on the digitalization of tea sector GPNs in East Africa highlight how these theoretical advances provide new insights on the digital and its expanding role in economic production.     

Southern African social movements at the 2007 Nairobi World Social Forum

How relevant is the anti‐globalization movement to the ideas and activities of social movements seeking to achieve economic justice and greater democratic accountability in southern Africa? Case study research in four southern African countries (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Swaziland) indicates that, while aspects of the anti‐globalization approach resonate with civil society and social movement actors (for example, an emphasis on mass participation and the internationalization of campaigning), the global social justice movement frequently displays the characteristics of globalization. These include: unaccountable decision‐making; profound (yet largely unacknowledged) inequality of access to resources; and an imposed and uniform organizational form that fails to consider local conditions. The World Social Forum (WSF) held in Nairobi in January 2007 provided many southern African social movement actors with their first opportunity to participate in the global manifestation of the anti‐globalization movement. The authors interviewed social movement activists across southern Africa before and during the Nairobi WSF about their experiences of the anti‐globalization movement and the Social Forum. An assessment of the effectiveness of this participation leads to the conclusion that the WSF is severely limited in its capacity to provide an effective forum for these actors to express their grievances and aspirations. However, hosting national social forums, their precise form adapted to reflect widely varied conditions in southern African states that are affected by globalization in diverse ways, appears to provide an important new form of mobilization that draws on particular elements of anti‐globalization praxis.     

‘Give me my pathway!‘: multinational migration,transnational skills regimes and migrant subjectification

In this article, I address the interplay between migration regimes and migrant subjectivities in stepwise multinational migration through a comparative analysis of biographical interviews with migrants in the healthcare and dairy farm work sectors in New Zealand. In both sectors, migrants' trajectories involve movements from Asia to locations in the Middle East, North Africa or Japan before arrival in New Zealand, and in some cases plans for onward migration. The analysis of these migration patterns and the narratives of migrants, reveal an emergent transnational skills regime that involves connected but uncoordinated systems of skills recognition; negotiating this regime occurs through increased attunement to migration on the part of multinational migrants, as well as adaptation to the expectations of authorities and employers. I conclude the article by suggesting that while multinational migration involves new opportunities for people on the move it also entails greater entanglement in the unequal conditioning of transnational migration.     

Truth,lies, and racial consequences in Ernest Hemingway's True at First Light: A Fictional Memoir

Abstract

This article examines Ernest Hemingway's posthumously published novel True at First Light: A Fictional Memoir, by relating the author's vision of the role of Africa in the literary imagination to issues the novel raises for postcolonial cultural and historical criticism. Analyzing the novel's narrative, which draws upon Hemingway's second safari to Kenya in 1953–4, offers insight into Hemingway's 'African American' consciousness, and the new awareness that he was able substantively to arrive at for the first time in this novel, less than 10 years before his death. This awareness inaugurated what might be called a fictional reverse migration, whereby Hemingway reconnects with the black native perspective on Africa that he encountered on his first safari in 1933–4, in order to acquire material insight into what blacks were experiencing in America at the time of his second safari. Identifying this awareness also leads to the possibility of (re)reading Hemingway's racial perspective in his earlier works with African settings.     

Beyond control? The mechanics and dynamics of ‘informal’ remittances between Europe and Africa

Abstract Policy making usually assumes that the best way to harness migrant remittances for development is by shifting them into the regulated money transfer sector. However, much research evidence concludes that alternative methods are often cheaper and more reliable, accessible and convenient. In this article, we explore this tension between policy objectives and evidence. Based on a review of remittance mechanisms in seven sub‐Saharan African countries, we question the validity of the distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ remittances. We conclude that the formalization of remittance systems should not be approached as a regulatory task carried out from the top down, but as a bottom‐up evolutionary and organic process that should be encouraged. We suggest that the current regulatory thrust in this area is likely to be counterproductive, since it risks undermining the many vibrant institutions emerging through the movement of migrants and their money, together with their potential to enhance much needed economic and social development.     

The global footballer and the local war‐zone: George Weah and transnational networks in Liberia,West Africa

Abstract Elite sport is the vehicle for global interactions via both its shared practices and the relations engendered by its governing bodies and its global tournaments. This capability has attracted the attentions of those seeking both nation‐building and reconciliation in war‐damaged nations. The narrative that follows has global implications, telling as it does the story of George Weah, a Liberian‐born footballer who became a humanitarian ambassador, and later aspired to become his country's president. Weah's story informs debates on globalization, illustrating the transnational career of a man who developed a keen understanding of institutional politics and patronage and who allowed himself to be courted by various global figures. These scenarios took place in Liberia, a war‐devastated African nation. This tale thus provides for reflection on how sport can encourage and undermine practises of nationhood. As a former World Footballer of the Year, Weah was a Liberian success story and well aware of his populist appeal. However, the issue of who a people are and who is to be their national political representative has proven to be a very fraught issue in the Liberian context. Whether global sporting networks have made the world smaller and the people more knowing in the Liberian context is an issue this article raises in considering its most famous citizen.     

Transnational childrearing and the preservation of transnational identity in Brazzaville,Congo

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at two ends of an intra‐Africa migration flow (Mali and the Republic of Congo), in this article I examine the role of childrearing practices in the maintenance of transnationalism. I consider different approaches to transnational childrearing by migrant parents and their reasons for adopting them, and delineate three common modes. The most widespread and socially validated approach is to send children home from Congo to their parents’ places of origin, where child fostering is widespread, to be raised by relatives for long periods; this approach increases the durability of transnational ties. I use childrearing approaches as an analytical lens to demonstrate the complementarity of multiple forms of domestic organization, mobility and settlement in the inter‐generational production and transmission of durable transnational identities. By arguing for greater focus on phenomena such as transnational childrearing, I seek to promote a broader conceptualization of transnationalism.     

Small is beautiful: the micro‐politics of transnational relationships between Ghanaian hometown associations and communities back home

In this article we investigate why some hometowns in Ghana are more successful than others in mobilizing resources for community development projects from their hometown associations (HTAs) abroad. We analyse the praxis of HTA‐financed development by studying all actors involved in the process – HTAs and migrants abroad and local community leaders and their populations in Ghana. We find there is a relationship between the size of the community and the effectiveness of HTA mobilization. From a matched sample of five villages and towns in Ghana and their respective HTAs in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, we conclude that three important factors are at play in the relationship between size and effectiveness – the micro‐politics of relationships between migrant and local leaders; the institutions that exist at the village/town level to create incentives or sanctions for migrants; and the relationships of trust between the different actors involved.     

Unsettling connections: transnational networks,development and African home associations

With the transnational turn in the social sciences attention has now turned to ‘global civil society’, ‘transnational civil society’, ‘transnational networks’ and, most recently, ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic civil society’. Claims are being made about the developmental potential of these new configurations of civil society, and the global connections forged by migrant and diaspora associational life have been reified into things called ‘networks’ for the purpose of enrolling them into development policy. In this article, we challenge the network model through an analysis of transnational Cameroonian and Tanzanian home associations. The idea of a network suggests an overly robust and ordered set of linkages for what are in effect often loose and transient connections. African home associations draw attention to the historically‐embedded and mundane ways in which forms of associational life can be ‘transnational’ outside the formalized structures and Eurocentric development hierarchies created by international NGOs and other development institutions. Although they form largely invisible connections operating outside these hierarchies, African home associations unsettle assumptions about the geography of civil society and its relationship with development. Close attention to the histories and geographies of African home associations reveals that power and agency more often lie with migrants and elites within Africa than with the transnational diaspora.