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Migrant-background youth travel often to their or their parents' country of origin, yet little is known about how such trips affect their personal growth. These trips have either been ignored or analysed through concepts of belonging or identity. By contrast, studies on international education and travel and tourism, which commonly focus on youth without migration background, highlight positive personal impacts of experiences abroad. This paper applies a personal growth lens to analyse how visits to the origin country impact Ghanaian-background youth living in Belgium. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Belgium and Ghana with 25 young people, we show how such trips stimulate self-confidence and aspirations. Self-confidence is strengthened through favourable treatment and access to luxurious spaces that make youth feel special. Young people develop educational and career aspirations after comparing opportunity structures they face in Belgium with their experiences in Ghana and engaging with Ghanaian role models.

Research on transnational youth mobilities has shown the importance of visits to the 'home' country for young people's identities, sense of belonging and access to resources. Yet what transpires on these visits and how do young people agentically shape their experiences? This paper brings into dialogue scholarship on 'homeland' mobilities, trajectories and temporalities to shed light on how youth experience their attachments to a 'homeland' and reveal the mechanisms through which young people's lives are affected by 'home' visits. We use the temporal concept of pacing, recently developed in mobility studies, to analyze how young people experience 'home' visits at different moments in their lives. Drawing on 18 months of multi‐sited ethnographic fieldwork using mobile methods with Ghanaian‐background youth who live in Belgium, we show that visits to Ghana are experienced differently by youth throughout their life time in relation to how much control they exert over the pacing of their visits. Through their mobility and their practices before, during and after 'home' visits, young people craft affective experiences with people and places in Ghana and experience different paces of life across space and time. This ultimately shapes how young people imagine a future 'good life' that involves a transnational lifestyle and that has the 'right pace' by incorporating aspects of life from both Belgium and Ghana. A focus on pacing and trajectories contributes to acknowledging both temporal and spatial dimensions of transnational youth mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on the effects of parental migration on the education of children who stay at origin, what we call 'stayer' youth, mainly focuses on educational outcomes without looking at the process leading to such outcomes. This article addresses this gap by showing how the educational trajectories of stayer youth unfold. Stayer youth may encounter a range of obstacles and interruptions to their education when their parents move overseas, and we explore the agency these youth exert and the support networks they activate to try to overcome them. We employ a youth‐centric methodology, based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in three cities in Ghana, with young people whose parents migrated internationally. We find that frequent changes in residence, limited financial means, and lack of academic support cause interruptions in educational trajectories. In response, the young people mobilize support from local social networks to compensate for what they lack from their transnational connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many youth in Global South countries, whose parents have migrated abroad while they have stayed, i.e., “stayer youth,” also aspire to migrate. While the current literature depicts stayer youth as “waiting” to emigrate, connoting passivity, recent critical youth studies suggest the importance of centring young people’s agency when focusing on their aspirations and experiences. This article investigates how stayer youth in Ghana “pace” their migration aspirations while “waiting.” By observing how youth change their aspirations over time, we first distinguish between different aspirations according to when youth first aim to migrate. Second, we “follow” stayer youth after their secondary school graduation to under‐ stand how they seek to fulfil their migration aspirations and the strategies they adopt therein. We use ethnographic data from 38 Ghanaian “stayer” young people. Our analyses show that stayer youth adapt their decision‐making when they realise some misalignment between their migration aspirations and capabilities. By analysing their adaptation strategies, we emphasise stayer youth’s agency despite structural forces confining them to what has been called “waithood.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how physical mobility shapes migrant youth's changing relationships to their or their parents' country of origin. Increasing numbers of youth in the Global North have a migration background and are transnationally engaged in virtual, imaginative and material mobilities. Yet our knowledge of their physical mobility is lacking, having largely been based on retrospective accounts from the country of residence, resulting in depictions of static relationships to a monolithic country of origin. This study takes a processual approach, focusing on mobility trajectories and exploring the sensorial, embodied and emotional aspects of physical mobility as it unfolds. Drawing on 14 months of mobile ethnographic fieldwork with 20 Ghanaian-background young people (aged 15–25) living in Hamburg, Germany, we focus on visits to Ghana to explore how physical mobility changes relationships to the country of origin over time (across several visits) and space (between different places within one visit). We use Urry's typology of proximity to analyse the specific and changing constellations of people, places and moments that constitute visits and thus shape these relationships. We also reflect on the methodological implications of using three mobile methods: mobility trajectory mapping, following mobility in real-time, and before-and-after interviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on diaspora engagement in development activities has centred on the contributions of migrating adults to the 'homeland', which range from private transfers to single households, to community development projects. While such studies often focus on the impact of such activities on the country of origin, relatively few have focused on what transpires during development encounters and how this affects migrants', and especially young people's, motivation to engage transnationally over time. This paper combines migration and development, transnational migration studies and second generation 'returns' literature, to address these gaps. It studies the motivations of transnational youth to engage in development encounters, which they referred to as 'giving back', in the context of their mobility trajectories. Drawing on 17 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands and accompanying young people during trips to Ghana, we show that giving back contributes to a sense of purpose that connects them transnationally. Young people's expectations of giving back were embedded in community narratives, which framed this as a means to 'become successful' in culturally valued ways. While young people sometimes encountered unexpected surprises, emotions experienced during development encounters led to learning that ultimately resulted in enhanced intentions of transnational engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing proportion of youth in the Global North are of migration background, many of whom engage in mobility across countries, through which they establish and maintain transnational networks of peers. While young people's local peer relationships have been established as a source of social capital, studies have to date ignored the role of transnational peers. This is largely because young people's mobility has been over-simplified, obscuring mechanisms that enable transnational peer relationships to emerge and thrive. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic, multi-sited fieldwork in Germany and Ghana with 20 young people of Ghanaian background (aged 15-25), this paper employs a mobility lens to show how transnational peer relationships provide social capital to migrant youth. We find that, through these relationships, migrant youth gain (1) educational motivation, as has been found in the literature on local peer relationships, and (2) transnational frames of reference, which is particular to transnational peer relationships. As such, we argue for an expansion of the concept of peer relationships to include those built and maintained through transnational mobility in order to generate a more comprehensive understanding of migrant youth's support systems and the valuable social capital that transnational peer relationships provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family reunification is the main reason youth independently migrate from the Global South to the Global North. Research on family reunification adheres to policy definitions of the phenomenon that portray reunification as something that happens within the destination country and within the nuclear family. Yet by following youth mobility trajectories, we show that young people experience many types of family reunification. This paper draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Belgium and Ghana with young people of Ghanaian background. We find that for young people, family includes multiple caregivers who are not necessarily nuclear family members, family reunification can at the same time entail family separation, and multiple family reunifications may occur in both the origin and the destination country. Many of these reunifications and separations are significant for youth yet they remain unseen when employing a policy definition of family reunification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how young Ghanaians' mobility between Ghana and The Netherlands relates to their educational resilience. Based on 20 months of multisited ethnographic research following 30 youths of 16--25 age group, we deploy a socio-ecological approach developed in social psychology to identify three resiliencebuilding mechanisms: connection to motivational others, active recollection and comparative confrontation. These mechanisms have to date remained outside of the purview of resilience research and research on migration and education, as these fields focus on the nation-state rather than the transnational context in which young people operate. They thereby ignore mobility patterns that make other contexts relevant to young people's educational resilience. As such, we expand the socio-ecological model of resilience to include transnational elements and show how mobility can positively relate to education and the resilience of migrant youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the ways in which young people with a migration background develop their own transnational engagement with their or their parents' country of origin. Drawing on 17-months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands and Ghana, we add to the emerging literature on 'return' mobilities by analysing young people of Ghanaian background, irrespective of whether they or their parents migrated, and by looking at an under-researched form of mobility that they engage in: that of attending funerals in Ghana. Funerals occupy a central role in Ghanaian society, and thus allow young people to gain knowledge about cultural practices, both by observing and embodying them, and develop their relationships with people in Ghana. Rather than reproducing their parents' transnational attachments, young people recreate these according to their own needs, which involves dealing with tensions. Peer relationships—which have largely gone unnoticed in transnational migration studies—play a significant role in this process. Résumé: Cet article étudie les manières dont des jeunes issus de l' immigration développent leur propre engagement transnational avec leur pays d' origine ou celui de leur parents. À partir d' une enquête ethnographique multi-située de seize mois entre les Pays-Bas et le Ghana, cet article contribue à une littérature émergente sur les mobilités « de retour » des jeunes de la première et seconde génération en analysant une forme inexplorée de mobilité dans laquelle les jeunes d' origine ghanéenne s' engagent : la célébration de funérailles au Ghana. Ces funérailles, qui occupent une place centrale dans la société ghanéenne, permettent aux jeunes d' acquérir des connaissances sur les pratiques culturelles du pays—tant en les observant qu' en les incorporant—et de développer leur réseau de relations sur place. L' enquête révèle que ces jeunes ne cherchent pas à reproduire les attachements transnationaux de leurs parents ; ils les recréent plutôt selon leurs propres besoins, générant des tensions. Les relations avec les pairs, qui ont été largement négligées dans l' étude transnationale des migrations, jouent un rôle significatif dans ce processus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that migration impacts youth outcomes, including educational performance and mental and physical health. It is, however, unknown whether differing patterns of mobility affect young people differently. This is because scholarship and policy-making on youth and migration simplify youth mobility by conceptualising youth either as immobile (when they ‘stay behind’ while their parents migrate) or as moving only once (when they follow parents or migrate independently). Between these extremes is the possibly more common phenomenon of youth who engage in sustained mobility patterns prior to, during, and after their first international move. This paper explores how youth mobility can be conceptualised to include the often-complex mobility patterns exhibited by youth in today’s global cities. Through an analysis of detailed mobility data collected using mixed methods among young Ghanaians growing up in and between the Netherlands and Ghana, we propose a typology of their mobility trajectories that highlights the variety of mobility patterns that youth engage in. Such a typology helps move research beyond the ethnic lens and rigid dichotomies between internal and international migration. We argue that the diversity of youth mobilities needs to be taken into account in order to understand how migration affects youth. [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]

This paper examines the relation between parental migration and children's health in Ghana (N = 2760) and Nigeria (N = 2168) and considers four dimensions of parental migration: the type of separation, parental migration and the caregiver, stability of care arrangements, and the availability of remittances. By employing an ordered scale of children's self-rated health, we found that children with international migrant parents who are divorced/separated are less likely than children in non-migrant families to have good health. The magnitude of the effects are higher in Nigeria, attesting for a greater vulnerability of Nigerian children in divorced migrant families. Among children with parents living abroad who are stably married, specific dimensions of children's transnational life are associated with negative health, while others are not. This study highlights the sensitivity of results to the context of parent-child separation and to the transnational dimension being measured. [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]

When parents migrate, leaving their children in the origin country, transnational families are formed. Transnational family studies on children who are “left behind” indicate that children suffer psychologically from parental migration. Many of the factors identified as affecting children's responses to parental migration however are not considered in child psychology and family sociology studies. This study aims to bridge these areas of knowledge by quantitatively investigating the association between transnational families and children's psychological well-being. It analyzes a survey conducted in three African countries in 2010–11 (Ghana N = 2760; Angola N = 2243; Nigeria N = 2168) amongst pupils of secondary schools. The study compares children in transnational families to those living with their parents in their country of origin. Children's psychological well-being is measured through the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Multiple regression analyses reveal that children in transnational families fare worse than their counterparts living with both parents but not in Ghana where living conditions mediate this relationship. This paper also looks at four characteristics of transnational families and finds that specific characteristics of transnational families and country contexts matter: (1) changing caregivers is associated with poorer well-being in all countries; (2) which parent migrates does not make a difference in Ghana, when mothers migrate and fathers are caregivers results in poorer well-being in Nigeria, and both mother's and father's migration result in worse outcomes in Angola; (3) the kin relationship of the caregiver is not associated with poorer well-being in Ghana and Nigeria but is in Angola; (4) children with parents who migrate internationally do not show different results than children whose parents migrate nationally in Ghana and Nigeria but in Angola international parental migration is associated with poorer psychological well-being. The study shows that broader characteristics in the population rather than parental migration per se are associated with decreased levels of well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Scholarship on the migration-development nexus has focused on the outcomes of remittances received by the inhabitants of countries in the Global South. This paper argues that this conceptualisation of remittances as one-way flows obscures the fact that remittances are part of reciprocal social relations. As such, they also entail flows of goods, money, and especially services from countries in the Global South to migrants, or what is called reverse remittances. The paper contributes to emerging literature on reverse remittances by broadening the conceptualisation of reverse remittances and presenting an analysis of their characteristics as well as those of receivers and providers. We find that most remittances from home communities to migrants are in the form of services rendered. These include childcare and helping with migrants' investments in housing and business. Furthermore, we elaborate on another type of reverse remittance overlooked in the literature: services conducted to help migrants obtain documents to regularise their stays in the host country. The type of reverse remittance received differs for documented and undocumented migrants, and the providers differ according to kin and non-kin relations. Depending on their significance, reverse remittances can be important in determining whether and how migration can lead to a betterment of people's lives in the Global South and are therefore relevant for the migration-development nexus, which has heretofore neglected their existence. The analysis is based on a simultaneous matched sample methodology conducted with 131 migrants in the Netherlands and their network members in Ghana, using both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies around the world have shown the interest of migrants to invest in houses in their countries of origin. Yet scholarly and political debates have mainly focused on the productivity of these investments, arguing that the money spent might have found more productive uses. We argue that this is too limited a view, as it fails to take into consideration two dimensions: Why do investments in houses take place, a question that is not only economic but also social and cultural in nature. Second, how do transnational investments in houses take place? This is important given that migrants are seldom able to construct their own homes, instead depending on actors in their country of origin. This paper shows the importance of unravelling the transnational relationships involved with migrant investments in houses in order to understand the meaning of these investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A transnational perspective is used in the analysis of the lives of Ghanaian migrants based in the Netherlands to answer two questions: how do migrants contribute to their home country, and do they also participate in the economy where they reside? An analysis of spending patterns of migrants both in the Netherlands and in Ghana shows that migrants are doubly engaged. In Ghana they invest in housing, business and education, contributing to the daily expenses of people back home and investing in their and their extended family's reputation by donating generously at funerals. At the same time they participate in the Dutch economy at the neighbourhood, city and national level. They devise various strategies for juggling their objectives between these two countries. However, Ghanaian migrants’ contribution to both countries is hampered by the high costs of identity documents both in the formal and informal economy. The paper thus links Dutch migration policies with the consequences for the lives of people back in Ghana. As such, it demonstrates the relationship between two areas that are usually kept separate in both academic and policy discourses: development in the Third World and the integration of migrants in industrialised countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies on remittances have focused on sub-Saharan Africa. This paper analyses a nationwide survey of 5,998 households to determine the characteristics of both internal and overseas remittances in Ghana. Particular attention is paid to the poverty-alleviation potential of remittances. Furthermore, this study uses a smaller scale pilot project with a matched sample of senders and receivers of remittances to identify some problems with using household-level surveys to assess the volume and impact of overseas remittances, and offers some suggestions as to how to handle these problems. The paper estimates that foreign remittances may be three times as large as Bank of Ghana estimates, bringing Ghana on par with large remittance receiving countries such as the Philippines and Mexico. The paper concludes that while foreign remittances are larger in value, locally sent remittances reach poorer segments of the population. Both foreign and local remittances are unevenly geographically distributed, being received more in the centre and southern regions than in northern Ghana where the poorest regions are. The paper argues a need to study multiplier effects of foreign remittances, as these can be large and eventually accrue to rural populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is the first to employ panel data to examine well-being outcomes-self-rated health, happiness, life satisfaction, and school enjoyment-of children in transnational families in an African context. It analyzes data collected in 2013, 2014, and 2015 from secondary schoolchildren and youth (ages 12-21) in Ghana (N = 741). Results indicate that children with fathers, mothers, or both parents away and those cared for by a parent, a family, or a nonfamily member are equally or more likely to have higher levels of well-being as children in nonmigrant families. Yet, there are certain risk factors-being a female, living in a family affected by divorce or by a change in caregiver while parents migrate-that may decrease child well-being., (© 2017 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)