Overview

This is the first book to capture the poignant stories of transnational African families and their use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in mediating their experiences of migration and caring across distance. Transnational Families in Africa analyses the highs and lows of family separation as a result of migration in three contexts: migration within South Africa from rural to urban areas; migration from other African countries into South Africa; and middle-class South Africans emigrating to non-African countries. The book foregrounds the importance of kinship and support from extended family as well as both the responsibilities migatory family members feel and the experience of loss by those left behind. Across the diverse circumstances explored in the book are similarities in migrants’ strategies for keeping in touch, but also large differences in relation to access to ICTs and ease-of-use that highlight the digital divide and generational gaps. As elsewhere in the world, and in spite of the varied experiences in these kinship circles, the phenomenon that is the transnational family is showing no signs of receding. This book provides a groundbreaking contribution to global debates on migration from the Global South.

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9781776148646

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Maria C Marchetti-Mercer is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Leslie Swartz is a clinical psychologist and Professor in the Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University. He is the author of How I Lost My Mother (2021). Loretta Baldassar is a professor in Anthropology and Sociology and Director of the Social Ageing (SAGE) Futures Lab at Edith Cowan University, Australia. She is Vice-President of the International Sociological Association Migration Research Committee.

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