The massive scale and complexity of international migration today tends to obscure the nuanced ways migrant families seek a sense of belonging. In this book, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg takes readers back and forth between Cameroon and Germany to explore how migrant mothers through the careful and at times difficult management of relationships juggle belonging in multiple places at once: their new country, their old country, and the diasporic community that bridges them. Feldman-Savelsberg introduces readers to several Cameroonian mothers, each with her own unique history, concerns, and voice. Through scenes of their lives at a hometown association's year-end party, a celebration for a new baby, a visit to the Foreigners' Office, and many others as well as the stories they tell one another, Feldman-Savelsberg enlivens our thinking about migrants' lives and the networks and repertoires that they draw on to find stability and, ultimately, belonging. Placing women's individual voices within international social contexts, this book unveils new, intimate links between the geographical and the generational as they intersect in the dreams, frustrations, uncertainties, and resolve of strong women holding families together across continents.
About the AuthorPamela Feldman-Savelsberg is the Broom Professor of Social Demography and Anthropology at Carleton College. She is the author of Plundered Kitchens, Empty Wombs and editor of Reproduction, Collective Memory, and Generation in Africa.
Book InformationISBN 9780226389882
Author Pamela Feldman-SavelsbergFormat Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint University of Chicago PressPublisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 397g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 16mm * 1mm