Transnational networks of care: Angolan children in fosterage in Portugal

Abstract

This article is about the informal circulation of children who migrate from Angola to Portugal without their birth parents or primary caretakers. It explores the motivations underlying kinship care, and the relationships through which child circulation is negotiated. In this discussion, I also look at how this practice is transformed by migration, turning local relations into transnational networks of care. Finally, I argue that child circulation as a social practice can create, maintain or lessen the amount of social capital of the people implicated.

Keywords:

• Child circulation
• kinship care
• transnational networks
• migration
• Portugal
• Angola

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, and Venetia Evergeti and Elisabetta Zontini for constructive comments on the final draft. Michaela Schäuble, Christiane Hellerman and Esben Leifsen also deserve my thanks for commenting on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. Instead it is talked about in terms of the social relations between the persons involved.

2. I am currently involved in Informal child migration in Europe-a three-year project based at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Please see http://www.sai.uio.no for further details.

3. The concept of social capital as I use it follows Bourdieu's definition of the concept (see Bourdieu 2003, p. 114). In a discussion of Bourdieu's ‘economy of practices’ Smart elaborates the concept: ‘Social capital, designating such things as obligations and trust, is by its very nature vague and immeasurable. Obligation is always potential: once it has been used, it does not exist anymore, and until then, there is no certainty that the obligation or “gift debt” will actually be reciprocated. Thus, you don't really know how much you have until you try to use it (Smart 1993, p. 393).

4. Although the article only deals with informal child circulation as it happens in the Angolan community in Portugal, I am aware that this for example also happens in the Cape Verdean population.

5. These are provisional numbers from Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (S.E.F.), published in 2005.

6. Astrid Anderson 2004, p.111.

7. This would primarily be in contexts outside Angola were the practice might be in conflict with the law.

8. Derived from afiliação – affiliation and afiliar – affiliate; bringing us back to the notion of being related or connected.

9. My understanding of these and other issues arising during fieldwork has greatly benefited from discussions with Marzia Grassi. For the significance of informal social networks and economy within Luso-African communities, see Grassi 2003 and 1998.

10. See Carsten (2000) for a further elaboration on the notion of relatedness.

11. On several occasions I was told that, ‘In Africa, those who have too many children give to those who don't have any, or have too few’. Gusmão (2004) hints, but does not elaborate, on the existence of informal child circulation in the African communities of Greater Lisbon.

12. This obviously prevents large scale trafficking, but on the other hand the only thing such an authorisation controls is the migration moment and not what happens afterwards. The trust given to those who bring the children out of the country can still be abused.