Paper short abstract:

This paper is part of PhD project, which adopts a comparative methodology between PALOP young descendants their parents in what concerns representations and life trajectories. The aim is to identify the main generational differences comparing the process of entrance to adulthood in two generations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is part of ongoing PhD project, named "Gender and generations: processes of transition to adult life of young descendants from Portuguese speaking African countries", which will adopt a comparative methodology between young descendants from PALOP and their parents in what concerns representations and transitions to adulthood.

This analysis gives us the overlapping, density, and sequence of the different life events in the two generations, by identifying the main differences in terms of timing, duration, and order of life's major events, like finishing education, entering the labor market, leaving home, conjugality and parenthood. In that way we can discuss if the condition of being migrant children makes difference in the life trajectory and if in the different spheres, there is a reproduction of parent's trajectories. Another main objective is to understand "how, when and why does it make a difference being male or female" (Eckes and Trautner, 2000:10), taking into account the main gender differences in the different events and transition markers.

This paper aims to present a first reflection on the main generational differences in life courses comparing the process of entrance to adulthood in two generations, based on a literature review from sociology of youth, migration, gender and generation studies and field work preliminary results.

Paper short abstract:

My proposal is to explain the introducing of the issue of intergenerational relationships into my ongoing PhD research. I aim to understand the different impacts of EFA certification on Lusophone immigrants and their descendants, treating the generational differences as a crucial point of analysis.

Paper long abstract:

This is part of my on ongoing PhD research entitled "Lives recounted - the impact of the EFA experience on the life trajectories of Lusophone labour migrants and their descendants".

My proposal is to explain the path that led me to introduce the issue of intergenerational relationships into my PhD research. Initially, the goal was to understand the impact of EFA certification on Lusophone immigrants' lives. In the official statistics these immigrants and their descendants appear in the category 'foreigners' i.e. they appear interchangeably in a single category. Despite being born in Portugal, a significant number of the descendants of immigrants have never been able to acquire Portuguese nationality, which affects various dimensions of their lives, including access to and continuation in the educational system and labour market.

The situation found in the fieldwork led to the resizing of the sample, which now considers not only Lusophone immigrants but also their descendants as a key object of analysis. I aim to understand the different impacts of EFA certification, treating the generational differences as a crucial point of analysis. Despite these two generations sharing the certification processes, I consider that the discourses on the impact of the EFA experience in their lives can be differentiated.

On the basis of interviews conducted, I argue that being a Lusophone immigrants and the descendants of Lusophone immigrants form two distinct categories - for we are referring here to different generations that, despite the firmly established relationships between them, ultimately (self)evaluate the EFA experience differently.

Paper short abstract:

African children living in Portugal have lower rates of obesity while the ones with mixed ethnicity have the highest. Children with one parent of African origin might be at higher risk of being overweight/obese.

Paper long abstract:

This study focuses on the health status of children from Portuguese, African and mixed ethnicity living in Portugal. Our aims are: i) to report the prevalence of under-and-over nutrition among these children and ii) to determine the influence of parental factors. The data was collected in 2009 in Portugal and 10.642 boys and girls aged 6 to 9 years old were selected. The prevalence of short-stature-for-age, according to growth references (Frisancho 2008), is higher on Portuguese girls while on boy´s quite similar on both ethnic groups. The African girls registered more low-weight-for-age. The International Obesity Task Force (Cole et al 2000, 2007) classification for overweight/obesity shows that there are more overweight Portuguese girls whereas the African children have lower prevalence in both categories. Portuguese boys are heavier than their African counterparts. The birth weight and the weight of both parents positively influenced the boys' BMI at the time of measurement while the parents' ethnic group did not. However, the girl's BMI was significantly affected by their birth weight, the mother´s weight gain, the weight of the parents and with their ethnic group. In summary, our preliminary findings show that African children living in Portugal have lower rates of obesity while the ones with mixed ethnicity have the highest. Among girls, their BMI is significantly associated with the ethnic group they belong to which might indicate that children with one parent of African origin are at higher risk of being overweight/obese.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic insights into associative debates between West-African migrants and young French of West-African descent, this communication analyses how the links to the country of origin become a stake of power and conflicts across generations of migrants.

Paper long abstract:

My Ph.D. thesis deals with the link between young West-African immigrant descendants in France and their "country of origin". More specifically, I analyse different modes of production of memory and identity discourses from and about immigrant descendants. This led me to conduct five ethnographic investigations in Paris. One of them consisted in observing meetings which gathered associations of West-African migrants and organizations of French of West-African descent, where they debated the links to the "homeland" and the possibility for the "second generation" to "take the helm" of their parents in the country of origin (by sending money to their families and funding collective projects for example).

To stress the importance in adopting an intergenerational frame in the migration studies, I propose to analyse the interactions within these meetings, firstly by paying attention to the eldest' "assignments" and "injunctions" addressed to the youngsters; secondly by describing how the French of West-African descent reacted to these discourses (accepting, opposing or transforming the migrants' requests); and thirdly by showing how these interactions led to the construction of a new "link to the homeland" that was deeply embedded in stakes of power and conflict in a postcolonial and minority context.

Paper short abstract:

A la différence des parents qui se sont hâtés de revenir en Afrique dans les années 1960, leurs enfants aujourd’hui préfèrent rester en France. Peut-on parler de l’écart entre les générations ou d’une stratégie des parents envers leurs enfants ?

Paper long abstract:

En France, dans les années 2000 nous pouvons constater l'augmentation de nombre des jeunes africains venus des pays d'Afrique subsaharienne, originaires de familles appartenant à la classe moyenne ou à l'élite de la société. Ce sont les enfants des ingénieurs, des enseignants, des diplomates, des fonctionnaires d'Etat : ces parents ont pratiquement tous fait leurs études en France dans les années 1960-1970 et se sont hâtés de revenir en Afrique, pour laquelle une nouvelle vie commençait. A la différence de ces parents leurs enfants, diplômés d'écoles prestigieuses dans les capitales africaines, préfèrent rester en France meme si leur arrivée dans ce pays signifiait pour eux descendre dans l'échelle sociale. Ces jeunes expliquent cela par le fait qu'ils ont « grandissaient comme français » (ils allaient dans des écoles françaises, pour eux le français étaient pratiquement leur langue maternelle), ils n'ont pu alors s'habituer à la vie africaine, vivaient dans les limites du cercle de l'élite, sans avoir rien en commun avec les autres habitants du pays. Comment les parents voient cette rupture de ces enfants avec leurs pays ? Comment ces jeunes eux-mêmes voient leurs rôle dans leurs propres Etats africains ? Peut-on parler de l'écart entre les générations ou d'une stratégie des parents envers leurs enfants ? Je vais utiliser dans mon intervention des interviews réalisées en 2010-2011 en France dans le milieu des Africains initialement arrivés en France pour faire des études à l'université et qui sont ensuite restés dans le pays, après avoir obtenu un travail.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is part of my PhD project. It sheds light on how Moroccan women of different generations migrated to Italy live, and present their discourses and practices related to the processes of marriage and family formation. It is a work based on ethnographic methods and in-depth biographical interviews.

Paper long abstract:

I based my work on some questions raised in debates across Europe on family and migration issues with the aim of exploring if, to what extent and how transformation and diversification of marriage and family models occur within a framework of international migration.

In this study I pursue a multi-sited and multi-method approach that draws on ethnographic methods, and biographical methods.

I interviewed young Moroccan women and their mothers living in the North of Italy. I take into consideration transnational women's life experiences, both in Italy and in the country of origin, where I have spent a period of research.

In the in-depth biographical interviews I took a closer look at how women claim, reject, or otherwise redefine discourses and practices with respect to marriage and family issues, both in the public and the private spheres. In particular, the interviews focus on some specific topics such as the diversity of constructions of gender roles and relations, marriage strategies, family forms and arrangements. I am interested in understanding how, from an intra and intergenerational perspective, these discourses and practices are constituted and reworked in, by and through the processes of migration.

The dissertation aims at providing, from an intersectional perspective, rich insights into the agency of migrant women in shaping the societies they live in, subjectively in the self-identities they produce and materially in the ways they act upon their circumstances.

Paper short abstract:

Aim of the paper is to analyze a ‘postcolonial archive’, concerning the social production of adoptable migrant children today, inside Western Institutions. Starting from an ethnographic field with Nigerian women in Italy, the paper will focus on the consequences of these dispossessed kinships

Paper long abstract:

Many Nigerian women arrived in Italy are qualified as 'victims' of human trafficking when they denounced their 'pimps' and they are protected by the State through its social Institution. When they became mothers, something changes in the relation between them and the Institutions for care and assistance: no more perceived as vulnerable women to protect, they became dangerous and annoying mothers for their children. As recently Bailkin (2009) underlines for the British context African mothers had failed to embrace the Bowlbyist gospel of maternal care.

Moving from an anthropological and psychological perspective and starting from an ethnographic field-research conducted with 20 Nigerian families, the paper will analyze this postcolonial archive: how Italian Public Institutions work hard to product an 'adoptable child', especially when brings into the world by a Nigerian mother. The paper will focus on the consequences of these 'dispossessed kinships' and the challenges of African motherhood today in Europe. "Bureocraft" shows there all its socio-political magic power (Sayad, 1999): these mothers are constructed as affected by psychiatric disorders, and their children too are exposed to the diagnosis of mental disease or to the moral discourse of 'sauvagerie'. The author would like to stress how this cultural and social construction of African immigrant babies introduces ruptures and challenges in the relationship between African immigrant mothers, their children and their families in Nigeria. "I'm not dead, yet", shout Nigerian mother out of the Court; but they never see again their children, became magically Products of Italy: new citizens.

Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of migration on intergenerational relationship within South Sudanese Australian families. A particular focus is the unintended consequences of intervention by Australian authorities responding to reports of intergenerational family violence.

Paper long abstract:

The current South Sudanese population of Australia is approximately 30,000, most of whom are forced immigrants and came for resettlement between 2002 and 2008. Despite the experience of trauma and long periods of displacement experienced by many of them, the community has demonstrated significant achievements and is making an increasing contribution to Australia. At the same time, intergenerational conflict, violence and breakdown within families are central concerns for the South Sudanese Australian community as well as for Australian authorities.

The focus of this paper is twofold. Firstly, data from in-depth interviews of 38 South Sudanese community members and community development workers is analysed to explore main causes of inter-generational conflict in South Sudanese Australian families. Secondly, the paper will demonstrate how intervention from authorities responding to reports of abuse, dominantly in the form of corporal punishment of children by parents, was perceived as an attack from the government which destroys the authority and responsibility as parents. By feeling constrained from physically punishing their children some parents felt demoralised by their sense of losing their rights to discipline their children. In response they withdrew their parenting efforts leaving a vacuum in the behaviour management and mentoring of their youth who at the same time were learning and testing their liberties and responsibilities in their new environment. The paper concludes by considering more appropriate strategies by Australian authorities to support South Sudanese and other African migrant families managing and resolving family conflicts.

Paper short abstract:

The main purpose of this talk is to bring into light the role that women have played within migrant families with regard to care work.

Paper long abstract:

This main purpose this talk has actually splits into two aims: I want to answer these two questions: (1) What are the reproductive activities that women are carrying out in migrant families when they stay at the household?; and (2) What happens when these women migrate abroad? I will focus, in particular, in the case of Senegalese migration in Spain. This case reveals some particularities which enrich the theoretical debate on this issue. The reason for this is that Senegalese families display certain features that substantially expand the concept of caring work. These families are extended ones, as a result of polygyny and patrilocality. Furthermore, in these families care work tasks are not reduced to children. The care of parents (and of parents in law, in the case of the wife) is essential in Senegalese culture.

There are still few studies that analyze migratory processes focusing on other than nuclear household structures. My main purpose is precisely to take advantage of some specific features of the Senegalese origin families, like their extended and patrilocal structure, in order to determine their effects on the migratory process, thus contributing to fill this gap in migration theories.

Paper short abstract:

The paper comes from a study in an area of the northern Benin severely marked by ecological decline. It looks at emigrants and their corresponding shifts in care arrangements and the assignment of economic responsibility, according to perceptions of upcoming environmental crisis or abundance.

Paper long abstract:

There has been growing attention to the impacts on human populations of environmental change and degradation, including sharp increases in those termed "environmental migrants" or "environmental refugees". Migrants may try to distribute their migrating members along particular kinship, gendered or legal lines, creating what one might call, 'trans-climate families.' This paper comes from a study in an area of the northern Benin that has been severely marked by ecological decline. It will look at Bielabe groups who undertake marriage journeys (emigration and far displacement) after requiring divine instruction and several rituals. As an illustration, from the 1960s, many of the endogamous marriages arranged by elders consisted of exchanges of sisters between boys (Kiansi, 1993). To keep these demands by ritual leaders and seniors at bay, a number of immigrants have gone to live elsewhere in the neighbouring countries (in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Togo). Others have moved further south in the country, beyond the immediate control of the family's local spiritual and economic authorities. This paper focuses on a comparison between of Beninese emigrants and other African nationals now settled in Northern Benin, in the Atakora area, who appear to be trying to balance the social demands and environmental risks with which they are confronted, while also sustaining long distance care arrangements to support dependent family back home. Families may even begin to press their members toward attempting to attain legal status in particular regions, to try to retain access to places of relative environmental stability and diversity.