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2 - Aspirations, Obligations, and Imagination in Family Migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

Leslie Fesenmyer
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Summary

Chapter 2 focuses on the migration stories of two generations of Kenyans, situating them within wider family and social histories. Although only one person in a family typically moved, I argue that their migration is better understood as family migration, rather than economic migration. While economic gain and social possibilities are related, they are not the same. Rather, these migration projects marked the convergence of individual and familial aspirations, thereby re-centring kinship as a means of realising the futures of both those who moved and those who stayed. The imaginings of migrant and non-migrant kin are important to this discussion and reveal how the United Kingdom was a largely imagined place at the time of migration, though not an arbitrary migration destination. Alongside this focus on place and space, the chapter begins to explore the role of time and temporality in the self- and life-making projects of migrants and their families.

Type
Chapter
Information
Relative Distance
Kinship, Migration, and Christianity between Kenya and the United Kingdom
, pp. 55 - 78
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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