Mothers on the Move: Reproducing Belonging between Africa and Europe - Softcover

Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022638988X ISBN 13: 9780226389882

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2016

Synopsis

The massive scale and complexity of international migration today tends to obscure the nuanced ways migrant families seek a sense of belonging. In this book, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg takes readers back and forth between Cameroon and Germany to explore how migrant mothers—through the careful and at times difficult management of relationships—juggle belonging in multiple places at once: their new country, their old country, and the diasporic community that bridges them.

Feldman-Savelsberg introduces readers to several Cameroonian mothers, each with her own unique history, concerns, and voice. Through scenes of their lives—at a hometown association’s year-end party, a celebration for a new baby, a visit to the Foreigners’ Office, and many others—as well as the stories they tell one another, Feldman-Savelsberg enlivens our thinking about migrants’ lives and the networks and repertoires that they draw on to find stability and, ultimately, belonging. Placing women’s individual voices within international social contexts, this book unveils new, intimate links between the geographical and the generational as they intersect in the dreams, frustrations, uncertainties, and resolve of strong women holding families together across continents.

About this title

About the Author

Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg is the Broom Professor of Social Demography and Anthropology at Carleton College. She is the author of Plundered Kitchens, Empty Wombs and editor of Reproduction, Collective Memory, and Generation in Africa.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022638988X
• ISBN 13: 9780226389882
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 259