Relative Distance

Kinship, Migration, and Christianity Between Kenya and the United Kingdom
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-009-33507-2
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 71, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 494 g

Reihe: The International African Library

The socio-economic and political uncertainties of Kenya in the 1990s jeopardized what many saw as the promises of modernity. An increasing number of Kenyans migrated, many to Britain, a country that felt familiar from Kenyan history. Based on extensive fieldwork in Kenya and the United Kingdom, Leslie Fesenmyer provides a rich, historically-nuanced study of the kinship dilemmas that underlie transnational migration and explores the dynamic relationship between those who migrate and those who stay behind. Challenging a focus on changing modes of economic production, 'push-pull' factors, and globalization as drivers of familial change, she analyses everyday transnational family life. Relative Distance shows how quotidian interactions, exchanges, and practices transform kinship on a local and global scale. Through the prism of intergenerational care, Fesenmyer reveals that the question of who is responsible for whom, is not only a familial matter, but is at the heart of relations between individuals, societies, and states.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fesenmyer, Leslie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Securing the future: family, livelihoods, and mobility; 2. Aspirations, obligations, and imagination in family migration; 3. The making of 'migrants'; 4. Kinship dilemmas: negotiating relatedness across space; 5. Weddings as transnational household rituals: marriage and other intimate relations; 6. Change and continuity: the social reproduction of families between Kenya and the United Kingdom; 7. Conclusion; References.

Über Autor(innen)

Fesenmyer, Leslie
Leslie Fesenmyer is Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Birmingham. She is currently leading a project on multi-religious encounters in urban Kenya funded by the European Research Council. Her research has been published in leading journals, including City & Society, Journal of Religion in Africa, and Social Anthropology.