Paper short abstract:

Translocal networks and migration are the everyday life's norm in sub-Saharan Africa to respond to the widespread vulnerability. Within the networks, children circulate between different household members for manifold reasons and with manifold outcomes for themselves and their family network.

Paper long abstract:

Translocal networks between rural and urban areas are of vital importance for large populations in sub-Saharan Africa, notably Burkina Faso. In these networks, the associated individuals try to organize their daily lives together by distributing chances and risks at different places. For this purpose, goods, money, ideas, values and of course people circulate within these places in the translocal networks. Among the people circulating are children who migrate for manifold purposes which depend on the network's necessity of labour and care distribution, their sex and age and individual skills. For example, girls are likely to be fostered to relatives or friends in the network to help in the household; boys often come to the cities to help their uncles in their garages. Some of the fostered children attend evening courses and thus enhance their skills; others are simply fostered to a lonely or old aunt to keep her company. The outcomes for and effects of this fostering on the children are diverse and depend on the course of the fostering, individual characteristics and interpersonal relations. However, it can be generalized that the idiom "children are the future" is of particular weight in this context, as investment in children not only improves the children's lives and future perspectives, but those of the translocal network as a whole: If the fostering is perceived positively by all participants, it has enormous development chances for the child and the network in store. If it is not, a collapse of the network might be possible.