Migrants and the role of Information Communication Technologies
Edited by Maria Marchetti-Mercer, Leslie Swartz, Loretta Baldassar and Gonzalo Bacigalupe
The book explores the experiences of transnational migrant families from Africa, including flows into and out of South Africa, and how technology is used to maintain kinship and duties of care from afar.
This is the first book to capture the stories of transnational African families and their use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in mediating their experiences of migration and caring across distance.
The highs and lows of family separation
Transnational Families in Africa analyses the highs and lows of family separation as a result of migration in three contexts: migration within South Africa from rural to urban areas; migration from other African countries into South Africa; and middle-class South Africans emigrating to non-African countries.
The book foregrounds the importance of kinship and support from extended family as well as both the responsibilities migratory family members feel and the experience of loss by those left behind.
Across the diverse circumstances explored in the book are similarities in migrants’ strategies for keeping in touch, but also large differences in relation to access to ICTs and ease-of-use that highlight the digital divide and generational gaps. As elsewhere in the world, and in spite of the varied experiences in these kinship circles, the phenomenon that is the transnational family is showing no signs of receding. This book provides a groundbreaking contribution to global debates on migration from the Global South.
About the editors
Maria C Marchetti-Mercer is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Leslie Swartz is a clinical psychologist and Professor in the Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University. He is the author of How I Lost My Mother (2021).
Loretta Baldassar is a professor in Anthropology and Sociology and Director of the Social Ageing (SAGE) Futures Lab at Edith Cowan University, Australia. She is Vice-President of the International Sociological Association Migration Research Committee.
Gonzalo Bacigalupe is Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
- Publisher | Wits University Press |
- ISBN | 9781776148646 |
- Recommended Price | $20.00 |
- Subject | Social Sciences |
For more information | Corina van der Spoel | +27 (0)11 717 8705/8700 | mail me |
