Relative tension: the migration experiences of young Angolans in transnational families in Portugal

Abstract

This article focus on transnational families in which care work for growing children is shared between kin living in different geographical locations, and the experiences of young transnational Angolans. I analyze these young migrants’ personal narratives to explore how dissimilar experiences and perceptions of the migration process within their families created for varying degrees of friction and tension between kin. I argue that migration affects and reconfigures the intrafamilial and intergenerational relationships of transnational families because of the physical distance over which these migrants have to manage their social relationships. Feelings of obligation, trust, and reciprocity are crucial in the maintenance of transnational kin networks, and encompass non-material as well as material sides of family life. But just as notions of trust and reciprocity are constitutive of transnational social relationships, the empirical examples have established that so too are humiliation and marginalization.

Keywords:

• transnational families: migrant children
• upbringing
• reciprocity
• Angola
• Portugal

Acknowledgements

The research for this article took place within the framework of the research programme Informal Child Migration in Europe (N-ICME), funded by the Research Council of Norway. During the project, entitled The transnational networks of care of Angolan children in Portugal, I worked at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. I would like to thank Alexander Tymczuk, Morten Kjeldseth Pettersen, Penelope Moore, and the two anonymous reviewers for comments on the article.

Notes

1. My knowledge of the Angolan diaspora in Portugal originates from two periods of research. I did 18 months of fieldwork in the period 2002–2003 for my doctoral work on female Angolan migration to Portugal, exploring perceptions of home and belonging among white and black women from different socio-economic backgrounds. The fieldwork mostly took place in Greater Lisbon, but also with a group of women in a town I have chosen to call Maré, situated on the Algarve coast. The story of Filomena that appears later in the text is drawn from that material. Participant-observation and interviews have been the principal research methods in both of the two periods of fieldwork.

2. The making my dissertation film, Growing Pains ( 2006 ) was a process of discovery in terms of fosterage practices and kinship related issues in the diaspora (cf. Øien 2006). Through my encounter with Júlia, the main character, I started to understand more about notions of relatedness and the constitution of familial relationships in Angolan families.

3. Calor humano can literally be translated as ‘human warmth’ or interpersonal cordiality.

4. As of 1 January 2008, the minimum monthly salary in Portugal was 426 euros.