Heike Drotbohm

Mobility, moralities and motherhood : Navigating the contingencies of Cape Verdean lives

In this article we discuss how transnational motherhood is managed and experienced in contexts of uncertainty and conflicting pressures. We propose a conceptual approach and apply it to a specific case: female migration from Cape Verde to Europe and North America. The analysis is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the authors in Cape Verde and the diaspora over the past decade. We first address the ideal of and expectations towards transnational mothering in Cape Verde, relating these to local forms of kinship, fostering and household organisation. We demonstrate that lengthy separations between mothers and young children are socially constructed as a normal aspect of transnational lives: they are a painful necessity, but are not automatically assumed to be traumatic. In an ideal situation, the biological mother and the foster mother play complementary roles in what we describe as the transnational fostering triangle. Subsequently, we ask how transnational mothering is confronted by unforeseen incidents and obstacles, which we refer to as contingencies. We relate these contingencies to the negotiation of individual and collective ideas and aspirations. The Cape Verdean case is interesting in a comparative perspective because of the social acceptance of mother–child separation. Our analysis explores how this acceptance co-exists with the real-life challenges of transnational mothering.

Horizons of long-distance intimacies: Reciprocity, contribution and disjuncture in Cape Verde

This article employs the renewed anthropology of kinship to revisit historical approaches to the study of social relations taking place in transnational social fields. Based on multi-sited qualitative anthropological fieldwork with a strong historical perspective centred on biographical interviews and social network analysis, the author examines a particular Cape Verdean household that comprises four generations and extends its contacts between several Cape Verdean islands, Portugal, São Tomé/Príncipe as well as the United States. The contextualization of the individual life courses of its members and their changing relatedness in the course of time brings to surface a complex design of factors that contribute to the sense of belonging or detachment in this Creole transnational island society. These are different levels of mobility, the challenges and limits of diverse levels of technical connectivity between several localities, the dynamics between approved relatedness and family-based migration regimes as well as the normative aspects resulting in a gendered perspective on the demands of reciprocity. The author introduces the notion of a “contributive family model” in order to capture the individual choice of keeping in touch and the meaning of social practices, which transform ideas of relatedness into reconfirmed transnational solidarities.

On the durability and the decomposition of citizenship: the social logics of forced return migration in Cape Verde

This article explores the impact of deportation, a state practice increasingly applied by European and North American governments, on notions of sociality in transnational social fields. In particular, it concentrates on the dynamics between formal citizenship on the one hand and the moral economies of belonging and membership on the other. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in Cape Verde, where deportation is producing a new social minority, this article examines the confluence of social and formal legal practices of exercising membership in transnational fields. After summarising the constitutive features of Cape Verdean transnational social formation, the trajectories and perspectives of deportees are highlighted in relation to their family networks, as well as in their encounters with the wider society and state structures. It is argued that understandings of social inclusion and perceptions of membership are embedded in moral discourses on ‘law’ and ‘justice’ as they circulate within transnational social fields. In the context of forced return migration, citizenship emerges as an arena for claiming legitimacy and integration and likewise becomes a key mode of the formulation of conditionalities for integration and social exclusion.

Deportation, Anxiety, Justice: New Ethnographic Perspectives

This paper introduces a collection of articles that share ethnographic perspectives on the intersections between deportation, anxiety and justice. As a form of expulsion regulating human mobility, deportation policies may be justified by public authorities as measures responding to anxieties over (unregulated) migration. At the same time, they also bring out uncertainty and unrest to deportable/deported migrants and their families. Providing new and complementary insights into what ‘deportation’ as a legal and policy measure actually embraces in social reality, this special issue argues for an understanding of deportation as a process that begins long before, and carries on long after, the removal from one country to another takes place. It provides a transnational perspective over the ‘deportation corridor’, covering different places, sites, actors and institutions. Furthermore, it reasserts the emotional and normative elements inherent to deportation policies and practices emphasising the interplay between deportation, perceptions of justice and national, institutional and personal anxieties. The papers cover a broad spectrum of geographical sites, deportation practices and perspectives and are a significant and long overdue contribution to the current state of the art in deportation studies.

Gossip and social control across the seas: targeting gender, resource inequalities and support in Cape Verdean transnational families

Abstract In this article I make use of transnational Cape Verdean gossip in order to elaborate on social asymmetries between members of transnational families. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork carried out in Cape Verde, I reflect on the content of gossip stories as well as the motivations and reactions of those involved. Gender and resource inequalities are identified as the most prevalent issues, fixed on matters of intimacy, reciprocity, and transnational support. Furthermore, the analysis of the extended network of people involved in these mutual evaluations suggests that members of transnational social networks reflect on newly emerged kinship hierarchies by redefining gender norms, familiarity, and claims to knowledge. The article demonstrates that transnational gossip stories are not ‘just talk’, but they impose particular orders and moralities relevant for those included into them and hence, they should be understood as a powerful tool for exercising social control across national borders.

Einleitung: Die reflexive Wende in der Migrationsforschung

In diesem gleichsam einfuhrenden wie programmatischen Beitrag wird die These verfolgt, dass sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten in der Integrations- und Migrationsforschung eine intellektuelle Krise ereignet hat, die vor allem die zentralen Grundbegriffe – Migration, Kultur und Gesellschaft – kritisch hinterfragt. Im Rahmen der daran anknupfenden „reflexiven Wende“ geht es verstarkt darum, die Wissens- und Bedeutungszusammenhange zum Thema zu machen, durch die Migration als abgrenzbares Phanomen in Erscheinung tritt. Den Konstruktcharakter wissenschaftlichen Wissens uber Migration klarer zu erkennen, fuhrt aber nicht zu einer Abkehr von empirischer Forschung, sondern stimuliert, wie dieser Sammelband zeigt, die Entwicklung neuer thematischer Zuschnitte, theoretischer Konzepte und Forschungsansatze, denen bei aller Pluralitat gemein ist, dass sie sich aus den empirischen und intellektuellen Begrenzungen des ehemals dominanten Integrations- und Ungleichheitsparadigmas herausgelost haben. Sie stehen in diesem Sinne fur einen sich immer deutlicher abzeichnenden Paradigmenwechsel der Migrationsforschung.

Shifting Care Among Families, Social Networks, and State Institutions in Times of Crisis: A Transnational Cape Verdean Perspective

The questions of who cares for whom, who is supposed to care for whom, under what grounds and conditions, in which phase of the life-course, and who is eligible to be cared for are constitutive in understanding the organization of society. While care can be understood as a constant social practice, the presence or absence of care is noticed especially in times of vulnerability and need. A crisis, whether it occurs at the individual level, in social networks, or in institutions, can go along with intensified claims to care, but it can also hinder or question its adequate provision. In this chapter, these general assumptions will be applied to the particular living conditions of transnational families: the ability to migrate goes hand in hand with the obligation to care for those left behind and the provision of care constitutes an important means for expressing feelings of intimacy over great spatial distances. Often, the capacity to care for those remaining behind in the country of origin depends on the institutional background in both the latter and the country of destination. In the following I aim to show that a crisis, that is, the sudden lack or withdrawal of care, can connect individuals, families, communities, and institutions over long distances when care-related norms and expectations have to be readjusted according to changing circumstances.

Familie als zentrale Berechtigungskategorie der Migration: Von der Transnationalisierung der Sorge zur Verrechtlichung sozialer Bindungen

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Zusammenspiel von grenzuberschreitend gelebten Familienbeziehungen auf der einen Seite und familienbezogenen Einwanderungspolitiken auf der anderen. Anhand empirischer Daten wird ein Entscheidungskonflikt erlautert, der sowohl zwischen einer staatlichen Kinder- und Jugendschutzeinrichtung in Kap Verde als auch zwischen Mitgliedern einer kapverdischen Familie ausgetragen wird, die auf den kapverdischen Inseln, in Portugal und in den USA leben. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Frage, was ‚Familie‘ ist, welche Beziehungen dazu gezahlt werden und welche Beziehungsinhalte damit verbunden werden, von Seiten dieser Akteure unterschiedlich beantwortet wird. Der Beitrag problematisiert, dass im Zuge der Regulation grenzuberschreitender Mobilitat, die uber spezifische Berechtigungskategorien erfolgt, eine rechtliche Konkretisierung sozialer Bindungen stattfindet, die den sozialen Konventionen und Konzeptionen von MigrantInnen und ihren Angehorigen widersprechen kann. Im Zentrum der Betrachtung stehen sowohl die administrativen Entscheidungen uber grenzuberschreitende Mobilitat, deren normative Kategorien ins Innere des Sozialen zuruckwirken, als auch die familialen Praxen, die auf diese Kategorisierungen reagieren.

Book Review: Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt

cultural view. A collection of case studies on systems and characterizations of local and scientific knowledge, in competition and/or alliance, may signal a trip down a well-worn path. To its credit, this publication does much to place local knowledge in the working and practicing world that challenges theoretical and scholarly premises of local knowledge. Considering the current focus on biodiversity, Development and Local Knowledge offers timely and important insights. It also raises important questions regarding the role of anthropologists. Do we unnecessarily pursue cultural faithfulness in our classification of knowledge? Rather than emphasizing the gaps between Western and indigenous/local, what can we do to bridge the gaps? To this I would add that perhaps it is time to popularize the concept that local and indigenous knowledge also rests with the indigenous peoples of developed countries – it is not the exclusive property of the Third World as this series of case studies might suggest.