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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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"My baby is my paper!" The role of (unborn) children for Nigerian migrants on the road
| Panel |
23. Family Dynamics an Migration: Tensions in Gender and Generation Relations
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| Paper ID | 386 |
| Author(s) |
Kastner, Kristin
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | This paper will focus on family dynamics in the context of Nigerian female migration to Spain. The main reason for migrating to Europe is to be able to support the family back home in Nigeria – these are parents, siblings and also their own children, who were left home with close relatives. For many migrants, the journey to Europe means "travelling through land". The most popular route to Morocco is via Mali and the Algerian Sahara, and it often takes months or even several years before the crossing to the Spanish south coast or to the Canaries can be attempted. In this transitional stadium, many migrants get pregnant and new, quasi-family relationships develop, which are highly provisional. Often, these (unborn) children are neither the result of relationships based on mutual consent nor planned. Nontheless, they play, despite significant ambivalences, a crucial role to proceed with the journey: These days they represent a kind of protection and "papers" due to tightened migration laws on both sides of the Street of Gibraltar and therefore reduce the risk for their mothers to be deported.
Being mostly single mothers, those migrants who gave birth on the road and successfully crossed the sea to Europe soon take over the role of double breadwinners: On the one hand, they have to support the family in Nigeria, on the other hand, they have to provide for their children who were born in Morocco or Spain.
This paper will focus on these new forms of family relationships that span from the country of origin to the transit country and the (provisional) destination country.
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