Transnational peer relationships as social capital: mobile migrant youth between Ghana and Germany

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational youth mobility
• peer relationships
• social capital
• Germany
• Ghana

Introduction

More than one fifth of youth in OECD countries now have a migration background (OECD 2015, 231). In some major European cities, like Hamburg, the majority of youth have a migration background (Statistikamt Nord 2018). Many migrant youth engage in various patterns of mobility between countries, through which they establish and maintain transnational networks, including with peers. Yet youth mobility has long been over-simplified, obscuring mechanisms that enable transnational peer relationships to thrive and support migrant youth. Traditional conceptions of migrant youth as having migrated themselves (‘first generation’) or having parents who migrated (‘second generation’) conceal their highly diverse mobility trajectories and the possibilities that these trajectories offer for building, maintaining, and benefitting from transnational peer relationships. Youth studies (Ryan 2000; Collins and Laursen 2004; Holland, Reynolds, and Weller 2007) have identified young people’s peer relationships as a source of support, influence and, more generally, social capital. However, conceiving of youth – including migrant youth – as largely sedentary, they have focused almost exclusively on peers in young people’s local environments. By contrast, transnational migration research (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton 1992; Madianou and Miller 2011; Baldassar and Merla 2014) has long acknowledged the durability and importance of relationships across borders. But this field has predominantly conceived of youth as immobile and in relationship only to adults (usually parents and caregivers), thereby excluding both migrant youth’s own mobility and peer relationships from research on transnational networks.

There is, however, increasing consensus that transnational youth mobility is ‘at the heart of contemporary social and political concerns’ (Cheung Judge, Blazek, and Esson 2020, 1), and new research agendas seek to adequately investigate increasingly mobile young lives (ibid., Mazzucato 2015; Robertson, Harris, and Baldassar 2018). This paper brings youth studies and transnational migration research into dialogue to address the above-mentioned gaps by employing a mobility lens, which involves putting young people’s mobility trajectories – their geographic moves in time and space and the resulting family constellations – at the centre of the research design (Mazzucato 2015). Through an investigation of mobility trajectories, we show that migrant youth gain social capital from their transnational peer relationships. ‘Migrant youth’ are defined as young people aged 15–25 who either migrated internationally themselves or whose parents did, and ‘transnational peer relationships’ as relationships with same-generation relatives, friends and romantic partners that are maintained transnationally, that is, between two or more countries. While peer relationships can exist between young people in the same location who are nevertheless involved in ‘transnational social fields’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004), these essentially local relationships are not our focus. Rather, we argue for an expansion of the conception 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.

The paper draws on 14 months of ethnographic, multi-sited fieldwork in Germany and Ghana with 20 young people of Ghanaian background. In the following section, we review the relevant literature on peer relationships, social capital, and youth mobility. We then describe our methods and sample, before presenting our data and analysis of two types of social capital gained through transnational peer relationships. The conclusion addresses implications for research on transnational migrant youth.

Transnational peer relationships and social capital through a mobility lens

Youth studies and related fields have established the importance of peer relationships for young people. In adolescence, peers become increasingly influential, rivalling parents as the main providers of support (Collins and Laursen 2004). Peer relationships are positive influences during periods of change (Smith and Skrbiš 2016), educational transitions (Keay, Lang, and Frederickson 2015), and for academic attainment (Studsrød and Bru 2011). They also support adolescents’ social and academic development (Pernice-Duca 2010; Wentzel et al. 2010; Mariano et al. 2011).

Resources provided through young people’s peer relationships are commonly conceptualised as social capital. Original definitions of social capital (Bourdieu 1986; Coleman 1988; Putnam 1995) have been critiqued for being adult-centric, by presuming that young people passively gain social capital from their parents (Morrow 1999; Abada and Tenkorang 2009). Youth studies research, much of it published in this journal, has shown that young people also generate social capital through their own networks, including peers (Holland, Reynolds, and Weller 2007; Chesters and Smith 2015). While social capital is a somewhat-elusive concept, covering aspects as varied as ‘sociability, social networks, social support, trust, reciprocity, and community and civic engagement’ (Morrow 1999, 744), it remains useful for capturing the ways in which young people actively build, invest in, and benefit from social relationships. We employ Holland, Reynolds, and Weller’s (2007) definition of social capital as ‘encompass[ing] the values that people hold and the resources that they can access’ through social relationships (98).

Young people’s social capital has generally been studied as ‘embedded spatially, culturally and temporally in the locality where they reside’ (Raffo and Reeves 2000, 154). As such, the literature on peer-generated social capital focuses almost exclusively on local peers. Even studies that include migrant youth tend to overlook resources accessed through their mobility and transnational peers (Holland, Reynolds, and Weller 2007; Lee and Lam 2016; Ryan et al. 2019). For example, Holland, Reynolds, and Weller’s (2007) discussion of the role of diasporic and transnational networks in Caribbean youth’s social capital in the United Kingdom focuses largely on the role of local family networks and ‘black neighbourhoods’, without discussing young people’s own transnational mobility or peer relationships. Ryan et al. (2019) likewise focus on migrant youth who receive peer support, but only from local peers in Britain.

Transnational migration research, however, has long acknowledged the importance of relationships beyond the nation-state (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton 1992). Transnational family studies have investigated how migrant families employ various practices to ‘do family’ across distance (Mazzucato 2013; Baldassar and Merla 2014). Migrant parents provide financial and material support by sending remittances to their families back home, primarily for their children’s education (Parreñas 2005; Dreby 2007; Schmalzbauer 2008). Information and communications technologies (ICTs) enable migrant parents to emotionally support their children, both through direct conversation in phone calls and text messages, and through ‘co-presence’, whereby families spend time together online using social media and video calls (Madianou and Miller 2011; Baldassar 2016). Migrant parents’ intermittent visits back home also sustain family relationships and ensure the flow of resources (Fresnoza-Flot 2009; Haagsman and Mazzucato 2014). Yet these studies mostly conceive of the resources migrant youth receive from transnational networks as provided by adults (particularly parents and caregivers), not peers. Furthermore, the youth in transnational family studies are usually those ‘left behind’ when their parents migrate (Dreby 2007; Schmalzbauer 2008), not transnationally mobile youth.

We address these gaps in the literature by studying how peer-generated social capital works in a transnational context. We do so by analysing two main forms of young people’s social capital found in the youth studies and transnational migration literatures, respectively. The first is educational motivation, which peers provide through two mechanisms: emotional support and role modelling. Peers are important sources of emotional support for young people (Mariano et al. 2011; Ryan et al. 2019), including migrant youth (Holland, Reynolds, and Weller 2007; Pernice-Duca 2010). Beyond helping them navigate the changes and challenges of adolescence, emotional support also provides educational motivation to young people (Wentzel et al. 2010; Studsrød and Bru 2011; Ryan et al. 2019). Studies have also documented peers’ behaviours and values ‘rubbing off’ on young people, which we refer to as ‘role modelling’, specifically in relation to their educational engagement and performance. Studies have shown that young people adopt and are motivated by the academic behaviours and values of their peers, especially classmates (Ryan 2000; Wentzel et al. 2010; Ryan et al. 2019). These mechanisms also affect the educational outcomes of migrant youth (Lee and Lam 2016). We investigate three mechanisms through which migrant youth gain educational motivation from transnational peer relationships, including the two discussed here and a third that emerged in our data: competition.

The second form of peer-generated social capital, which relies explicitly on a transnational context, is dual frames of reference. Early theorisations showed how adult migrants’ direct experience of their countries of origin and residence enabled them to compare various aspects of life between both contexts (Vertovec 2009). Recently, researchers have found that second-generation migrant youth gain dual frames of reference through parental transmission of family histories and cultural values from the country of origin (Franceschelli, Schoon, and Evans 2017), especially to support educational attainment and aspirations (Fernández-Kelly 2008). Orupabo, Drange, and Abrahamsen (2020) describe how dual frames of reference facilitate the educational attainment of migrant youth, because comparing local educational opportunities with those in their (parents’) poorer country of origin makes them optimistic. Few researchers have looked beyond parental transmission to explore how migrant youth create dual frames of reference through their own mobility (Louie 2006; van Geel and Mazzucato 2020) and transnational networks (Haikkola 2011). While our study focuses on two countries, Germany and Ghana, we recognise that migrant youth’s transnational networks often extend beyond the countries of origin and residence (Haikkola 2011; van Liempt 2011). As such, we refer to this type of social capital as ‘transnational frames of reference’ and analyse three ways in which migrant youth gain this capital through their transnational peer relationships, which we inductively found in our data: by comparing educational environments, job prospects, and socio-political contexts between Ghana and Germany.

This overlooking of migrant youth’s own transnational relationships and the social capital they provide stems from an over-simplification of mobility across the social sciences. Categorisations such as ‘first’ and ‘second generation’ reduce migrant youth’s mobility to a single migration event – either their own or their parents’, respectively (Mazzucato 2015). Studies of migrant youth tend to ignore their ongoing mobility, either by using ‘mobility’ as a synonym for ‘migration background’ or by excluding the possibility that relationships maintained and resources accessed through transnational mobility can affect migrant youth’s lives in the country of residence (e.g. Berggren, Torpsten, and Järkestig Berggren 2020). Further, while some studies argue that maintaining affinities with both countries of origin and residence leads to better outcomes for migrant youth, they rarely explore ongoing ties and mobility to the country of origin, instead focusing on the role of local ethnic communities (e.g. Holland, Reynolds, and Weller 2007; Abada and Tenkorang 2009). Therefore, transnational peer relationships have largely escaped the purview of this research, leaving rich sources of social capital unexplored.

Inspired by the ‘mobilities turn’, which encouraged social scientists to explore the role of mobility in wide-ranging phenomena (Sheller and Urry 2006), some emerging literatures do acknowledge the complexity, diversity, and impact of mobility experiences. Transnational migration studies on mobility trajectories explore migrants’ ongoing movements and transnational activities beyond a single migration event (Schapendonk and Steel 2014). Relatedly, second-generation returns literature shows that migrant youth move between their (parents’) countries of origin and residence throughout their lives, including for permanent relocation (Wessendorf 2007; King and Christou 2011). Furthermore, an emerging research agenda around transnational youth mobility is illuminating how a mobility lens can enrich our understanding of previously obscure aspects of migrant youth’s lives, including in transnational migration studies (Mazzucato 2015), youth studies (Robertson, Harris, and Baldassar 2018), and education sciences (Fürstenau 2005).

We operationalise a mobility lens through youth mobility trajectories, which refer to young people’s geographic moves in time and space and the resulting family constellations, as well as what transpires during mobility (Mazzucato 2015). Researchers have begun to explore migrant youth’s transnational mobility trajectories and networks (Haikkola 2011; van Geel and Mazzucato 2018), but with minimal investigation into the role of transnational peers and how they impact migrant youth’s lives in the country of residence. We build on this literature by studying how migrant youth create, maintain, and benefit from transnational peer relationships through their mobility trajectories.

Research setting

This study is part of the Mobility Trajectories of Young Lives (MO-TRAYL) project, which studies the effects of transnational mobility on Ghanaian-background youth in Hamburg (Germany), Antwerp (Belgium), The Hague (The Netherlands) and various cities in Ghana and is led by the second author (Mazzucato 2015). The study was approved by Maastricht University’s Ethics Committee. Between January 2018 and September 2019 the first author conducted onsite fieldwork for 12 months in Hamburg (Germany) and two months in Ghana, and online fieldwork throughout.

Mobility and migration are fundamental aspects of Ghanaian society, with adults and children moving internally and internationally for work, education and family reasons (Coe 2012). Relatedly, child ‘fostering’ is very common in Ghana, whereby children whose parents are abroad or elsewhere in Ghana circulate between various caregivers (ibid., Poeze, Dankyi, and Mazzucato 2017). Internationally, Germany hosts the second-largest Ghanaian population in continental Europe, and Hamburg is home to one-fifth of Germany’s Ghanaian community (Mörath 2015). In 2017, Ghanaians were the tenth-largest group of migration background in the highly diverse city, where more than a third of the population and over half its youth have a migration background (Statistikamt Nord 2018).

Sample

The sample consisted of 20 young people living in Hamburg, aged 15-25. Sampling criteria included having a Ghanaian background (meaning both parents were born in Ghana; 12 participants were born in Germany and 8 in Ghana); having spent time in Ghana (this ranged from a single weeks-long visit to several years of residence); and attending or having attended secondary school in Hamburg (10 had also received schooling in Ghana). Participants living in various parts of Hamburg were recruited through high schools, Ghanaian churches and youth groups, and snowball sampling.

Although most participants belonged to the working class in Hamburg, their social-class positions in Ghana were often starkly different, in line with research indicating that migrants are rarely the poorest of the poor in their country of origin (Mazzucato, van den Boom, and Nsowah-Nuamah 2008; Noll 2020). In Hamburg, many participants lived in working-class neighbourhoods and their parents worked blue-collar jobs, like cooks and cleaners. However, in Ghana many parents had completed high school, some had gained tertiary or vocational qualifications, and several parents and relatives had (or still) worked in business, education, and the civil service. Participants’ families were primarily from Ghana’s second-largest city, Kumasi, though several also had links to the capital, Accra, and a few came from other regions. Several participants stayed in affluent neighbourhoods when in Ghana and were part of highly mobile social networks there. In Hamburg, most participants (had) attended comprehensive public schools, Stadtteilschulen, while six had also completed part of their schooling at more prestigious public schools, such as Gymnasium or those with alternative pedagogical approaches. Most participants with Ghanaian education had attended elite boarding and international schools in cities known for their educational institutions, such as Accra, Kumasi, and Cape Coast, or had amassed significant educational capital in Ghana because, for example, their caregiver was a teacher. Most participants’ peers in Ghana shared similar social-class backgrounds, given they lived in the same neighbourhoods, were part of the same family networks, and attended the same schools.

Methods

Data were collected by the first author, principally through participant observation in young people’ homes, schools, churches, and recreational spaces, and through interviews with participants, some of their parents and teachers (only with participants’ explicit consent), and Ghanaian community leaders. In line with the project’s focus on transnational youth mobility, mobility and educational trajectory mapping was conducted with all participants and concentric-circle network mapping with 11 participants, using methods developed for the MO-TRAYL project (Mazzucato 2015; van Geel and Mazzucato 2018). Trajectory mapping systematically collects information on a participant’s geographical moves in time and space (including short trips and changes of residence and caregivers), schools attended, and the location of important relatives, resulting in a visualisation of their mobility and educational trajectory (Mazzucato et al. forthcoming). In concentric-circle mapping, participants place members of their networks in three concentric circles surrounding the participant at the centre, relative to their importance. These methods revealed the prevalence and importance of transnational peer relationships, which we then explored ethnographically among the entire sample. Following fieldwork, we analysed participants’ networks to identify the frequency and nature of transnational peer relationships, and coded written data to uncover prominent themes related to transnational peer relationships, including educational motivation, transnational frames of reference, emotional support, sustaining relationships to Ghana, shaping each other’s mobility, competition and information sharing. We then refined our selection to those themes most prevalent among our sample and related to social capital: educational motivation and transnational frames of reference. Sub-themes such as emotional support and competition were subsumed within these larger ones. We explore these main two themes in the following sections.

Transnational peer relationships: three cases

In this section, three vignettes illustrate how migrant youth gain social capital from transnational peer relationships. We chose these three cases because they encompass the two types of social capital we analyse – educational motivation and transnational frames of reference – while showing that different combinations of factors can lead to them, including varied mobility trajectories (‘first’ and ‘second generation') and relationships with diverse peers (romantic partners, friends, and relatives), which are maintained in various ways (through ICTs and visits to Ghana).

Ella¹

Ella (19) was born in Germany to Ghanaian parents but spent much of her childhood in Ghana. She moved to Ghana before her first birthday, returned to Germany for a year at age 8, then continued her schooling in Ghana until she moved back to Germany aged 16. When Ella completed a network map of the people most important to her, one name stood out. ‘Who supports you with school?’ ‘Michael.’ ‘And when you have problems with family?’ ‘Michael.’ ‘And how about making plans for the future?’ ‘Michael. Whoa, everything seems to be Michael!’ she laughed.

Ella and Michael (21) grew up as neighbours when Ella lived with her grandmother in Ghana. They had been a couple since Ella was 12 and maintained a long-distance relationship after Ella moved to Germany at 16. Despite this distance, Michael remained an important part of her support network. They spoke several times a day via WhatsApp. ‘The person who invented video calls did so with me in mind,’ she joked. Through this contact, they provided each other with emotional support, encouragement, and advice. On Ella’s first visit to Ghana in four years, her face-to-face contact with Michael was precious: ‘For me the most important person to see … was Michael, of course. I felt much closer to him when I saw him, and coming back [to Germany], it was really helping because the distance was too much.’ Shortly after Ella’s trip, they began seeking a scholarship for Michael to pursue a business degree in Germany.

Ahoufe

Ahoufe (20) was born in Ghana and moved to Germany with her mother and sister when she was 16 to join her father. Despite struggling to learn German and finding her classmates standoffish, she was doing well at school and was one year away from completing a bilingual Abitur (high-school qualification). The first time I met Ahoufe, she regaled me with stories of the Ghanaian schools she had attended and mentioned a WhatsApp group with her old classmates, who were an ongoing source of educational motivation. ‘When maybe you feel like quitting or you don’t feel like continuing, they are always there to inspire and encourage you to go hard or learn harder.’ Their direct encouragement was mixed with comforting co-presence through video-call study sessions. ‘Sometimes the phone will be there, nobody will be talking, [but] everyone will be studying.’

Alongside regular contact online, Ahoufe also reconnected with many friends in person on her first return visit to Ghana. During these encounters, her friends, many of whom were now studying at university, ‘all asked about school’ and updated Ahoufe on their own studies. Before her trip, Ahoufe had wondered whether to transfer to a Hochschule (technical college) in Hamburg rather than complete the final year of high school to enter university. After returning to Germany, Ahoufe decided to complete her final year, after which she planned to apply for degrees in international economics law.

Isaac

Isaac (21) was born in Ghana. At age 3, his mother moved to Germany and Isaac lived with his grandmother and later his maternal aunt while moving around Ghana to attend prestigious schools. At 16, he joined his mother and two German-born younger siblings in Hamburg. Following his high-school graduation four years later, Isaac started a hospital internship he hoped would lead to medical school. He confidently explained how he had navigated the move between Ghanaian and German schooling so successfully:

In Ghana, if you are not one of the best students, you go through a lot of stress with the family, problems with teachers, and even friends as well. So […], you try to study hard, to focus. […] But in Germany, it’s just something you have to be willing to do.

Isaac was proud he had not adopted this more-relaxed ‘German’ style of learning. In Ghana, Isaac’s grandmother had been frustrated by his obsession with football and neglect of his studies. At age 13, he moved to his aunt’s house, where four of his seven cousins – all born in the same year – lived. Living with and attending the same school as his studious cousins helped shift Isaac’s focus from sport to school. ‘The thing is, when you see that one is aiming higher and one is focusing more on studies, you actually think, ‘Okay, then I have to also give my best’ […] That’s where I had my inspiration from.’ This dynamic was encouraged by a family competition, which awarded a prize to the highest-performing cousin each semester: one cousin won a PlayStation, while Isaac received a bicycle. Since moving to Germany, Isaac and his cousins remained ‘sooo close.’ They spoke several times a week through Facetime and WhatsApp, and he continued to track his progress against theirs.

They are already in the university, […] studying together, learning hard. And me here, I’ll be thinking, ‘Okay, I’ve had an opportunity to come to Germany, what can I make out of it?’ So, I have to study and push harder, so I can also enter the university and also learn and give my best.

Transnational peer relationships: an overlooked source of social capital

Beyond the relationships presented in these vignettes, and despite their invisibility in the literature, transnational peer relationships constituted significant proportions of our participants’ networks. For example, of the 44 most-important people that Ella listed in her network map, 30 were peers, 20 of whom live in Ghana. Ahoufe listed 43 names; 35 were peers, 12 of whom live in Ghana. Of the 21 names Isaac listed, 18 were peers, 10 of whom live in Ghana. Drawing on the vignettes and additional cases from our sample, here we analyse two types of social capital our participants gained from their transnational relationships with peers in Ghana. The first – educational motivation – is commonly found in local peer relationships, but we find that it also occurs in transnational peer relationships. The second – transnational frames of reference – is unique to transnational peer relationships. We focus on these two types of social capital because they resonate with reviewed findings from the literature and were the most prominent and common types within our sample.

Educational motivation

Education was a huge priority for most participants, including those with and without schooling experience in Ghana. For participants with schooling experience in Ghana, they internalised the value of education through their educated family networks and at prestigious schools, where they performed highly and built a self-image as intelligent and capable students. They brought these values and confidence with them to Germany, where many continued to excel academically despite the challenges educationally mobile migrant youth face, including learning new languages, adapting to different pedagogical environments, and adjusting to unfamiliar curricula. For participants who had only attended school in Germany, the value of education was transmitted through their parents and reinforced through their own mobility to Ghana, where they were exposed to the behaviours and values of their educationally ambitious peers. Far from turning to transnational peers out of loneliness (Haikkola 2011), our participants also received educational support from peers in Hamburg, including peers with Ghanaian and other migration backgrounds and ‘native’ German students. As the influence of local peers has been established in the literature, we focus on the role of Ghana-based peers. Throughout their educational trajectories, our participants’ transnational peer relationships provided educational motivation through three main mechanisms: emotional support, role modelling, and competition. While emotional support and role modelling are documented in the literature on local peer relationships, competition emerged as a third mechanism in our data.

For those facing educational challenges in Hamburg, the emotional support from transnational peer relationships was a great motivator, inspiring them to overcome obstacles by keeping sight of bigger objectives – receiving a good-quality education and pursuing tertiary study. Ahoufe’s transition to schooling in Germany was challenging. ‘In the beginning, it wasn’t actually easy […] I found a lot of difficulties learning the language.’ But she was encouraged to persevere by friends in Ghana, whose support consisted of direct verbal motivations and supportive company online, like the video-call study sessions described above.

Emotional support also motivated young people during difficult periods of educational decision-making. Ella’s boyfriend, Michael, provided important emotional support when she reached an educational crossroads. Dissatisfied with her results after a recent move to a Gymnasium, Ella pondered whether to complete the final high-school exams, the Abitur, or move to a vocational track where she could earn money while gaining medical-assistant qualifications. During this stressful period, Ella and Michael spoke several times a day. Ella trusted Michael’s intimate knowledge of her academic abilities, personal qualities, and career goals to help her weigh her options: ‘He’s one of the reasons why I never gave up doing what I wanted to do or what I wanted to become in the future.’

A second mechanism producing educational motivation was Ghana-based peers’ role modelling of positive educational behaviours. For participants with schooling experience in Ghana, the educational behaviours and values they had absorbed during that time continued to be modelled by their peers there. In contrast to the existing literature, this role modelling did not depend on local peers (Ryan 2000; Wentzel et al. 2010; Ryan et al. 2019), nor was the transmission of educational values reliant purely on parents (Fernández-Kelly 2008; Franceschelli, Schoon, and Evans 2017). Like Isaac, many participants felt that ‘Ghanaian’ educational values – including a strong commitment to education, rigorous study ethic, and polite deference to teachers – were not common or expected in their German schools but nevertheless remained useful for their education in Germany.

Other participants described being motivated by older peers in Ghana who expressed interest in their schooling in Germany. Ahoufe described a peer who had been ‘kind of a teacher to me’ in Ghana as an ongoing source of educational motivation, through the emotional support she felt through his direct encouragements and the role modelling of his own good example. Having finished his Bachelor in Ghana, he would soon start a Master program in Europe.

He’s one person who always calls me and asks me about my school and always tells me […] this opportunity I have [to study in Germany], I should grab it and make good use of it. […] That’s the advice he always gives me: keep going, learn very hard, because education is like the best thing […] ever.

Finally, participants described finding educational motivation from peers in Ghana through competition. Despite being in different education systems, young people competed with their peers’ progress abroad. Isaac insisted the competitive dynamic with his cousins, established while living and studying together in Ghana, ‘hasn’t changed.’ Due to Isaac’s year in a compulsory preparation class (Internationale Vorbereitungsklasse) upon arrival in Hamburg and the longer secondary-school trajectory in Germany, Isaac now felt ‘behind’ his cousins: when he graduated high school in Hamburg, they were already at university in Ghana. Rather than comparing himself only to his current classmates in Hamburg (Wentzel et al. 2010), Isaac was motivated by a desire to match his cousins’ progress in Ghana and enter university, just like them.

Transnational frames of reference

Previous research has emphasised the creation of young people’s transnational frames of reference through parental transmission (Fernández-Kelly 2008) or their own observations during mobility (Louie 2006). Here, we emphasise the relational creation of transnational frames of reference through conversation and comparison among transnational peers. Through these interactions, migrant youth gain new perspectives on their own situation, sometimes prompting new decisions or pathways. We also show that transnational frames of reference do not always portray the country of residence as superior, but rather foster an understanding of advantages and disadvantages in both countries of origin and residence. As such, migrant youth are also influenced by what they see as the positive aspects of their Ghanaian peers’ lives. We discuss three ways in which migrant youth gain transnational frames of reference through their transnational peer relationships: by comparing educational environments, job prospects, and socio-political contexts.

Comparing educational environments – including the facilities, pathways, and cultures of German and Ghanaian schooling – with peers was the most common way our participants gained transnational frames of reference. Ella’s awareness of her boyfriend’s and other peers’ educational facilities in Ghana compelled her to make the most of her opportunities in Germany.

I realise my friends in Ghana are all in the uni [or] in apprenticeships, doing something that they are going to benefit from. […] They are lacking a lot of things there, [but] even with the little they have, they are trying to get something great out of it. […] And if I have something great, I should make something greater out of it.

Even migrant youth who had only schooled in Germany compared educational environments with peers during their visits to Ghana, including the starting age, pathways, and curriculum in each country. From these interactions, they drew conclusions about the relative (dis)advantages of each system and their own position within a broader context. Marjorie (19) was born and raised in Hamburg and had made three visits to Ghana. On these visits, conversations with her cousins and siblings led her to admire the discipline and academic skills of Ghanaian students. She noted that the younger enrolment age in Ghana facilitated literacy earlier than in Germany, and that her same-age Ghanaian peers were ahead in Math and English, which she thought useful for people who wanted ‘an international career.’

Participants’ interactions with peers in Ghana also prompted deeper reflections on the schooling cultures of each country and how these shaped their own educational values. Kwaku (21), who completed 12 years of schooling in Ghana before moving to Germany, was in weekly contact with two former classmates who were now at university in Ghana:

They think that the Ghana education system is more difficult than [the German system]. […] They think definitely it’s not how people here learn, [that] we don’t go through that stress – yeah, that’s the key word: stress […] We all go through stress, but the main point is: what are you stressing for?

Kwaku perceived that the Ghanaian system emphasises theoretical learning through discipline and memorisation, while the German system emphasises creativity and applied learning. Both approaches require effort and create stress, but in different ways. By debating these differences with his peers in Ghana, Kwaku was able to consciously combine the best of both worlds. Ultimately, he found it useful to channel the strict discipline of his Ghanaian peers towards more-practical applications of his learning in Germany that would be useful for his future career in aeronautical engineering, which he was now studying at university.

Comparing job prospects with peers was another way young people created transnational frames of reference. Several participants referred to their peers’ situations in Ghana to explain that many university graduates there were unable to find work, due to corruption, a fragile economy, and a job market outpaced by high graduation rates. In the vignette, Isaac asked himself what he could make of the ‘opportunity to come to Germany,’ while his cousins continued studying in Ghana. Part of his sense of opportunity was his perceived advantage regarding employment:

Here in Germany, […] we have job opportunities when we complete school. […] [But in Ghana] you can complete school, but you don’t get a job to do. […] I think in Ghana, because the economy is not that strong, we go for corruption. When you have money, you attach it to your [university] results, and you’ll be taken [accepted].

Ahoufe considered she had much better prospects for gaining full-time employment after university in Germany than her Ghanaian counterparts. She estimated that her part-time supermarket job in Hamburg during secondary school earned her double the income of many full-time positions in Ghana. Her friends in Ghana also actively reminded her of her opportunity: ‘They always advise me, ‘Ahoufe, […] you know where you are coming from […] you need to, like, learn, and pass your exams, and get a better job to do over there [in Germany]’.’ Such input from peers in Ghana constructed a transnational frame of reference regarding job prospects, which reminded young people of their relatively good employment opportunities in Germany. As noted, most participants lived in working-class neighbourhoods of Hamburg, with parents working manual jobs. But, despite challenges faced in Hamburg, they felt optimistic about their chances compared to their peers in Ghana.

Finally, comparing socio-political contexts between Germany and Ghana with peers also nurtured transnational frames of reference. Akosua (19) was born and raised in Hamburg, but lived in Ghana for 18 months between ages 5-6, and had visited Ghana five of the last six summers. On her most-recent visit, Akosua spent a lot of time with her 17-year old female neighbour. Many of their conversations revolved around comparisons of life in Germany and Ghana. In response to her neighbour’s question of whether Germany is a racist country, Akosua explained her ambivalence about life in each place:

[Racism in Germany] is what I don’t like, but it’s so mixed with having much more freedom [than in Ghana]. [In Germany] you can really be independent, you have more freedom about education, […] and as a woman you have more chances than in Ghana to become something. [But in Ghana] I like that everyone has the same skin colour, and you just feel comfortable […] Everyone is somehow equal and understands each other.

Akosua returned to Hamburg from Ghana with a renewed ambition to exercise her independence and opportunities by moving out of her mother’s home and studying social work at university. She also considered reconnecting to the solidarity she had felt in Ghana by volunteering there after her current vocational training. Her relationship with her neighbour in Ghana helped shape Akosua’s transnational frames of reference by prompting her to reflect on the socio-political differences between Germany and Ghana, thereby helping her define how she wanted to capitalise on the opportunities and benefits of both countries. These examples show that transnational frames of reference are a form of social capital that extends beyond the local environment (cf. Raffo and Reeves 2000) and does not emerge from local peer relationships. Rather, this type of social capital inherently relies on engagement in transnational contexts and relationships with transnational peers.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have shown that transnational peer relationships with same-generation relatives, friends, and romantic partners constitute significant parts of migrant youth’s support networks and provide social capital. In doing so, we have brought youth studies and transnational migration research into dialogue, by applying a mobility lens to the analysis of peer relationships. Focusing on migrant youth’s mobility trajectories rather than on a single migration event enriches our understanding of how migrant youth are faring and what resources support their lives. Such a mobility lens removes the methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003) of studies that consider only the local context and instead homes our attention to, first, how mobile migrant youth are, and second, what transpires through their mobility.

Young people’s transnational peer relationships have previously been absent in the literature, both as important parts of young people’s transnational networks and sources of their social capital. However, by mapping and analysing the transnational mobility and networks of migrant youth between Germany and Ghana, we could identify transnational peer relationships and investigate how migrant youth maintain and benefit from such relationships. Through this analysis, our key findings address these gaps and make the following contributions to the literature.

Our first key finding is that migrant youth build and maintain transnational peer relationships through their mobility trajectories. Migration and mobility are prevalent among Ghanaian-background youth (Coe 2012; Poeze, Dankyi, and Mazzucato 2017). As such, transnational peer relationships are not uncommon and deserve research attention. While parents and other adults remain important in young people’s transnational networks, relationships with peers are also highly significant. These relationships are maintained transnationally through the use of ICTs and visits to Ghana. While contact via ICTs was largely within participants’ own control, their visits to Ghana were usually dependent on their parents’ organisation and financing of such travels. As such, young people enacted constrained agency (Coe et al. 2011) in using their mobility to maintain such relationships. Migrant youth’s mobility trajectories defy any simple categorisation based on place of birth or minority status in the country of residence (van Geel and Mazzucato 2018). Diverse types of mobility to Ghana support transnational peer relationships, including extended periods in and short visits to the country. We find that extended time in Ghana tends to lead to peer relationships with a strong foundation of shared experience (in the same school, household or neighbourhood), and which are maintained intensely over distance, as in the cases of Ella, Isaac and Ahoufe. However, transnational peer relationships are also relevant to migrant youth who have never lived or schooled in Ghana but are nevertheless mobile, like Marjorie.

Our second key finding is that transnational peer relationships provide valuable social capital to migrant youth. This capital includes resources both similar to local peer relationships, such as educational motivation, and unique to transnational relationships, such as transnational frames of reference. The fact that emotional support from, role modelling by, and competition with transnational peers provide educational motivation shows that influences beyond the local context can benefit migrant youth’s education in the country of residence. This has implications for what types of knowledge, support and cultural capital are relevant and valued in national school systems (Berggren, Torpsten, and Järkestig Berggren 2020). Similarly, comparing educational environments, job prospects, and socio-political contexts with transnational peers can build transnational frames of reference that help migrant youth gain new perspectives on their own situation. These frames, which often value aspects of life in both countries, inform migrant youth’s decisions about their education, careers, and future mobility.

Our ethnographic research approach enabled us to identify and analyse the importance of transnational peer relationships; however, it also entailed limitations that point to potentially fruitful avenues of future research. First, all our participants have secondary education in Hamburg and most of their parents have been educated to at least secondary level in Ghana. As such, our insights reflect a certain reality that may not be shared by those with different educational histories and family backgrounds. Second, Ghana’s political stability and its relatively short distance from Germany make mobility between the two countries possible. It is unclear how transnational peer relationships are maintained by young people for whom mobility is difficult or impossible. Third, given our focus on young people living in Germany, we do not know whether the types of social capital analysed here are reciprocal for peers in the country of origin. This would involve asking: How do Ella’s boyfriend, Isaac’s cousins, and Ahoufe’s friends experience these relationships? Fourth, our participants’ transnational networks included peers in various countries, not just Ghana (see also Haikkola 2011; van Liempt 2011). As defined above, transnational peer relationships can be maintained between two or more countries, hence an exploration of transnational peer relationships beyond the countries of origin and residence would clarify the role these relationships play in the lives of increasingly mobile youth. Fifth, we have highlighted positive impacts of transnational peer relationships because this reflects the dominant experience of our participants and their meaning-making about such relationships, especially in interviews (Warren 2011). We occasionally observed negative moments in these relationships, such as friends demanding gifts or money during visits to Ghana, leaving participants feeling used and angry. As such, potential negative components of transnational peer relationships – including jealousy, miscommunications, and conflict, as have been found in transnational parent–child relationships (Parreñas 2005; Dreby 2007; Madianou and Miller 2011) – could be further investigated. Finally, our sample was too small to disaggregate by gender, yet studies have consistently found gender differences in young people’s peer relationships (Wentzel et al. 2010; Mariano et al. 2011). It would be instructive to explore whether gender shapes how migrant youth maintain and benefit from transnational peer relationships.

Overall, our findings show the need to expand the concept of peer relationships in order to build a more comprehensive understanding of the support systems of migrant youth and the valuable social capital that transnational peer relationships provide young people. Peers in Ghana are far from being ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for our participants in Germany. Instead, young people actively maintain transnational peer relationships through their mobility trajectories and draw on them in generating social capital. Only by updating our research agendas and approaches to reflect the role of transnational mobility in contemporary life can we adequately account for vital sources of social capital that shape the lives of migrant youth.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Sara Fürstenau, Lauren B. Wagner, Pomme van de Weerd, the MO-TRAYL team, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from the H2020 European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 682982).

Notes

1 All names are pseudonyms.