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Formal ties between China and several African states have intensified in recent years. Alongside growing economic and trade cooperation, the international mobility of people between China and African states is increasing. Recent studies have shown that African migrants face institutional barriers to integration in Chinese society, however, and the personal and social consequences of these barriers remain under-researched, especially the dynamics of intimate family life. Drawing upon concepts of precarity and 'low-end globalisation', this study examines how African-Chinese families navigate everyday life, including work, family and children's education. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork comprising observations and in-depth interviews with African-Chinese families and one community leader (n = 19). These reveal how families confront the pervasiveness of legal, economic and social precarization in multiple overlapping domains. These social forces have intergenerational repercussions, with adverse impacts on family life, interpersonal relationships and sense of belonging to the local community. Yet precarity offers conditions for practices of empowerment. We conclude with implications for migration studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The burgeoning literature on welfare migration, or on the likelihood of migrants moving to countries with more generous welfare states, yields mixed results. In this article, we aim to disentangle what kinds of considerations underlie the decisions that migrants and their families make to address their social protection needs when they move to certain places. We explain how Sudanese extended families, with members scattered across multiple countries, draw on formal and informal institutions to meet their needs for social protection. Through a transnational approach, we analyse the mechanisms guiding the access, circulation and coordination of resources to cover different but related social protection domains. We contribute to current debates on transnational social protection by drawing on the life stories of members of a Sudanese transnational family and by expanding on the concept of 'resource environment'. We based this article on 14 months of multi‐sited ethnographic fieldwork with Sudanese migrants and their families in the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Studies indicated differences between transnational family life for migrant mothers and fathers and that the effects on their “left‐behind” children differ according to who migrates. Yet little is known about why these differences exist. This paper aims to fill this gap by comparing transnational and nontransnational African families with parents living in Europe to understand their different family structures. We analyse three datasets with information on migrants from five African origin countries in eight European countries. Our analyses reveal important differences between transnational and nontransnational families and between transnational mothers and fathers. Transnational mothers are more often single, have children from multiple relationships, and start family life earlier than transnational fathers and nontransnational parents. This corresponds closely to what family sociologists have found make “fragile families” among nonmigrants. Our work thus indicates that policies aiming to improve migrants' lives need to consider the disadvantages that particularly migrant women experience in maintaining their family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This special issue aims to address the gap in transnational families studies by identifying if there are common patterns and effects of transnational family life across countries and regions, using cross‐country comparative analyses. In this editorial introduction, we highlight the overarching themes emerging from seven papers, which employ new large‐scale surveys specifically designed to collect information about transnational family life across different Latin American, African, and Southeast Asian countries and China. We discuss how these comparative studies offer new ways of understanding transnational families by focusing on their prevalence, composition, the experiences of their members, and how these change over time. We also highlight how differing and changing notions of care over space and a person's lifetime influence how transnational families are created, reproduced, maintained, and experienced. In general, the issue as a whole emphasises the need to take structural factors in both sending and receiving contexts into account when studying the form that transnational families take, how this changes over time, and the general and specific gendered effects they have on different members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is one of the first large-scale analyses on child psychological well-being in the context of parental migration when children remain in an African country. As such, it contributes to the literature by investigating some of the insights gained from in-depth transnational family studies, and it also provides evidence from Africa where normative contexts around family life differ from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and East Asia where most studies have been conducted to date. A survey was conducted in 2010/2011 with 2,760 secondary school children and youths in high out-migration areas of Ghana. Using multiple regression analysis, we find that being in a transnational family is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being, yet only in families where parents are divorced or separated. Furthermore, when parents are in a relationship, specific characteristics of transnational family arrangements are associated with lower levels of child psychological well-being, while others are not. In particular, whether a parent migrates internally or internationally, who the caregiver is, and having a good relationship with the migrant parent are not associated with poorer well-being outcomes. Instead, if a father migrates, if the child changes caregivers more than once, and if the child has a bad relationship with his or her migrant father are associated with lower levels of well-being. This study adds nuance to a field of research that has emphasised negative outcomes and helps identify policy areas to improve the well-being of children in transnational families. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration research tends to conceptualize migrants as providers of social protection for people back home. Yet the care conducted within transnational families and the way it is organized is an integral part of a global social protection system which is based on reciprocity between migrants and their families in their home countries. This system relies on the work of people back home just as much as on the remittances of migrants overseas. Drawing on ethnographic data from 34 caregivers, we provide a detailed description of the work conducted by people in Ghana to care for migrants’ children and analyze what caregivers do to make this work possible. We find that caregivers have small networks of support they can rely on and identify the strategies they develop when remittances are not forthcoming or enough to cater for the material needs of migrants’ children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no empirical research on the school performance of children who live separated from their parents in sub-Saharan Africa—a major migrant sending region in the world. This study uses survey data from junior and secondary school children and youths in Ghana (N = 2760), Angola (N = 2243) and Nigeria (N = 2168) to examine how different transnational family formations such as internal or international parental absence accompanied by migration or divorce, who is the migrant parent and who is the caregiver, the stability of the caregiving arrangement and remittances relate with the school performance of children who stay behind. School performance is measured through an index of grades in language, mathematics and science. The results show that international parental migration (Ghana), the internal parental migration accompanied by divorce/separation (Nigeria) and migration of both parents (Ghana and Nigeria) are likely predictors for decreased school performance. No effects are observed when parents are abroad and divorced/separated, when only one parent migrates, when children are in a stable care arrangement or when children receive remittances or not. The analyses show that the overall relationship between parental absence and education varies by the transnational dimension being analysed and by context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue entitled ‘Africa<>Europe: Transnational Linkages, Multi-Sited Lives’ outlines the history of the African migrant presence in Europe, gives an account of the contexts which shape contemporary migration, and surveys the approaches to international migration from Africa which have influenced researchers since the 1960s. Linking the contributions to the special issue is the theme of migrants’ transnational ‘double engagement’ with both Africa and Europe. The paper examines this theme across three domains of the lived experience of African migrants and refugees in Europe: ‘Livelihoods’, ‘Families’, and ‘Identities’. We conclude with an assessment of what can be learned (theoretically and methodologically) from the study of African transmigration, and suggest future lines of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]