Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Sending money or purchasing provisions? Senegalese migrants' attempts to negotiate a space for autonomy in long-distance family relations |
Author: | Blanchard, Melissa |
Year: | 2014 |
Periodical: | Journal des africanistes (ISSN 1957-7850) |
Volume: | 84 |
Pages: | 40-59 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Senegal |
Subjects: | migrants remittances family |
Abstract: | Sending remittances is one of the strongest bonds tying together families dispersed by migration. For migrants supporting the family left behind is a moral duty, a sign of their social affiliation and the gauge of their belonging to a network of kinship and exchange. As time goes by, though, some of them perceive the demands of their original families as excessive. They have thus developed different strategies to come to terms with the problem of control over the use of remittances. Building on fieldwork in Dakar, the author considers an original case of reorganization of remittance sending, put in place through the establishment of a website offering migrants the opportunity to purchase at a distance provisions they want delivered to their families in Senegal. This case study highlights the tensions that surround the practices of support within families that live in transnational spaces and shows how migration can encourage migrants to reorganize such relations, renegotiating their obligations of solidarity. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in English and in French. [Journal abstract] |