Transnational Families Between Ghana, the Netherlands and the UK

Kim Caarls, Valentina Mazzucato, Djamila Schans, Peter Quartey, Cynthia Addoquaye Tagoe - Migration between Africa and Europe

Abstract

This chapter from Migration between Africa and Europe investigates family life in the context of international migration between Ghana and Europe. Families engage in cross-border practices, such as nuclear and extended family members receiving remittances, goods, phone calls and visits from migrants abroad. Importantly, there is also evidence of reverse remittances, that is, flows from households in Ghana to their migratory contacts abroad. Transnational family forms, in which one or more members of the nuclear family are living abroad while the other members remain in the home or another country, are common. The extent to which migrants live transnationally or together with their nuclear family depends on their individual socio-economic and migration-related characteristics, but also on the destination country’s policies and structures. Furthermore, transnational families do not always reunify and when they do, they often reunify in Ghana rather than the country of destination.