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Translations in Kinscripts: Child Circulation among Ghanaians Abroad

Cati Coe

in Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration

When Ghanaians migrate abroad, they bring with them practices of distributed parenting that shape affective circuits between children and differently positioned individuals who contribute to the ... More

When Ghanaians migrate abroad, they bring with them practices of distributed parenting that shape affective circuits between children and differently positioned individuals who contribute to the children’s upbringing. In Ghana, parents use these strategies to care for children within extended families, build a social safety net, and teach children skills. But when Ghanains migrate abroad they soon find that the cultural frameworks that undergird the legal regulation of family life in Western countries do not recognize practices of distributed parenting. Drawing on three cases, including the famous soccer player Mario Balotelli who was fostered-out by his Ghanaian parents in Italy, a child of migrants to Italy who is fostered in Ghana by her grandmother, and a migrant who tries to adopt her nephews to bring them to live with her in the United States, the chapter explores what happens when Ghanaian migrants and the children of their families encounter Western cultural scripts about parenting.Less

From Micro- to Macro-: Individuals and the Big Picture

in The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany

The previous chapters illustrated the circulation of unwanted children from the distinct—and in some ways unique—perspectives of six historical individuals. This chapter assesses the general lessons ... More

The previous chapters illustrated the circulation of unwanted children from the distinct—and in some ways unique—perspectives of six historical individuals. This chapter assesses the general lessons drawn from these stories, first by using them to develop a new framework for analysis of such diverse historical experiences, and second by probing them as valuable source material for postulating some general patterns and cross-cultural comparisons about the overall social significance of child circulation and informal fostering.Less

the Absconding Father

in The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany

On February 20, 1615, the bailiff of suburban Gostenhof reported to the Nuremberg city council that he had taken into custody three young girls “left sitting” by their father, soldier Christof ... More

On February 20, 1615, the bailiff of suburban Gostenhof reported to the Nuremberg city council that he had taken into custody three young girls “left sitting” by their father, soldier Christof “Stoffel” Baur of Nördlingen. This chapter explores the background of Stoffel and other absent fathers, looking at the frequency of their comings and goings, the reasons behind their departures, and the impact their decisions had on the wives and children they left behind. It describes the necessities of everyday life for such households, how these heads of households attempted to meet those necessities, and what happened when they failed. Most important, the relative roles of informal child circulation and of governmental intervention in sustaining the fatherless household receives special attention, particularly in the context of paternal responsibility and affection.Less

Introduction

in The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany

This introductory chapter begins by considering the role of child abandonment in Western history. It argues that historians' overemphasis on laws and governmental institutions has distorted our ... More

This introductory chapter begins by considering the role of child abandonment in Western history. It argues that historians' overemphasis on laws and governmental institutions has distorted our understanding of the diverse and complex human relationships involved in the phenomena we classify under the legal categories of child abandonment and infanticide. In other words, our narrow focus on the legal aspects of the problem of unwanted children tends to obscure whatever came before the crime in question. Any explanation of broad social change predicated on such a flawed foundation is self-serving at best and grossly misleading at worst. The chapter then asks what would happen if we took the various acts that we call child abandonment and thought about them in a much broader context, such as what some historical anthropologists call the “circulation of children.” The discussion finally turns to the microhistory approach used in the subsequent chapters.Less

Circulation

Elizabeth L. Krause

in Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion

This chapter analyzes how kin-related values, norms, and practices become entangled in the hegemony of global supply chains. A demographic paradox exists in significant births registered to foreign ... More

This chapter analyzes how kin-related values, norms, and practices become entangled in the hegemony of global supply chains. A demographic paradox exists in significant births registered to foreign women and subsequent sending of babies to China. This circulation of children gives rise to new discourses and interventions on parenting, from institutions and experts, as children move in and out of Italian healthcare systems and schools. Encounter ethnography juxtaposes vocabularies of Chinese parents with the know-how of professional Italian health workers and educators. The chapter highlights the creation of global households as part of a broad variety of noncapitalist activities that co-exist with and even underwrite capitalism. Within the fast-fashion niche, sending babies to China to be raised by grandparents or other relatives has become a coping strategy. Salient themes include tempos of work, alienation, intimacy, and inevitability. Parent protagonists reveal the value gained or heartache endured from the transnational movement of children. Parents find value in circulating children in its power to activate systems of reciprocity across kin, to create networked bodies across territories, to secure affective bonds and strengthen mutual relations across generations, and to free up time so as to enhance their ability to work and make money.Less

Orphanhood and the Transformation of Kinship, Fosterage, and Children’s Circulation Strategies

Kristen E. Cheney

in Crying for Our Elders: African Orphanhood in the Age of HIV and AIDS

This chapter examines the way AIDS orphanhood has influenced child circulation and kin construction in Uganda. While many studies have documented the effects of AIDS on orphans and vulnerable ... More

This chapter examines the way AIDS orphanhood has influenced child circulation and kin construction in Uganda. While many studies have documented the effects of AIDS on orphans and vulnerable children’s circulation in Africa, few studies have critically examined the effects of AIDS on constructions of kinship, and particularly its symbolic repertoire amidst its everyday significance as a bodily substance. While ‘blood’ in the African context has gained notoriety in the age of HIV/AIDS as a substance that carries pathogens such as HIV, it has also gained significance as a substance that immutably binds children orphaned by those pathogens to their extended kin, on whom they rely for care. This chapter therefore traces the sometimes-contradictory social, economic, and emotional effects of children’s circulation within and across family networks, highlighting orphaned children’s concerns with identity and intra-family mobility. Doing so demonstrates how orphan care in the age of HIV/AIDS is consequently transforming both fosterage practices and kin obligation, jeopardizing children’s well-being and their ability to identify with the ‘blood ties’ that still form powerful tropes of relatedness for orphaned children.Less

The Beleaguered Magistrate

in The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany

This chapter analyzes the story of city councilor and Nuremberg Findel administrator Albrecht Pö, who orchestrated governmental responses to a variety of related problems. The devastating war and ... More

This chapter analyzes the story of city councilor and Nuremberg Findel administrator Albrecht Pö, who orchestrated governmental responses to a variety of related problems. The devastating war and plague years of 1632–39 constituted the worst and most sustained economic, demographic, and political crisis in Nuremberg's nine-hundred-year history. Pömer's challenge as Findel administrator was formidable, but it was extraordinary only in terms of the number of children affected and the creative coping methods employed. Fueled by a merger of traditional patrician sense of duty with Lutheran and humanist visions of the just civic order, ambitious reformers such as Pömer attempted to eliminate child begging, provide for the education and placement of citizens' children, and effectively deter child abandonment and infanticide through rigorous law enforcement and sometimes harsh punishment. Goals of this magnitude were virtually unprecedented among European states and in many ways anticipated the aspirations and methods of much later nation-states. Their methods, meanwhile, remained fairly conservative, particularly in their strong preference for informal child circulation, with institutional care for unwanted children a last resort. The result was a mixed success. To grasp the significance of this typically early modern mixture of innovative social reforms and traditional bureaucratic methods, the nature of all magisterial responsibility and action is first discussed.Less

The State Wards

in The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany

This chapter analyzes the story of orphaned twins who entered into governmental care at the age of nine. On March 7, 1647, nine-year-old twins named Eberhardt and Susanna Schier were admitted into ... More

This chapter analyzes the story of orphaned twins who entered into governmental care at the age of nine. On March 7, 1647, nine-year-old twins named Eberhardt and Susanna Schier were admitted into the Nuremberg Findel. The two children had lost their father, Stephan, before they reached their first birthday and their recently deceased mother, Sibylla, had never remarried during the intervening years. All the Findel children shared the same unwanted status, at least in terms of the normal channels of child circulation, but each of their stories reflected a different subjective experience of life in the Findel. Records of some 3,600 children who crossed the Findel's threshold between 1560 and 1670 provide a statistical context for the twins' experiences and reveal patterns by age, gender, and the nature of admission. Statistical data can also reveal which characteristics gave a child a higher probability of survival and post-Findel productivity, but cannot predict whether individuals who fit into all the most favorable statistical categories would in fact live to see adulthood.Less

Stories behind History

Elise Prébin

in Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption

This chapter explores the relationship between birth parents and adopted children in the context of transnational adoption and the return of transnational adoptees in the birth parents' lives. ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between birth parents and adopted children in the context of transnational adoption and the return of transnational adoptees in the birth parents' lives. Focusing on the narratives of Ach'im madang participants who look for their parents or who seek a lost sibling on behalf of their parents, it considers how transnational adoption became the rule after the Korean War. It also examines how the older participants were separated from their parents in a few different ways known as “practices of separation,” which are related to what social anthropologists referred to as “child circulation.” Finally, it discusses family ties involving transnational adoptees and their birth parents within the context of Confucius's notion of kinship.Less

Changing childhoods

Jane Gray, Ruth Geraghty, and David Ralph

in Family rhythms: The changing textures of family life in Ireland

This chapter explores the transformation of Irish childhoods since the early decades of the twentieth century, and shows how demographic and socio-economic changes are intertwined with a ... More

This chapter explores the transformation of Irish childhoods since the early decades of the twentieth century, and shows how demographic and socio-economic changes are intertwined with a transformation in the meanings of childhood. Where once children’s labour contribution to the Irish household economy was a taken-for-granted part of their daily lives, contemporary children are carriers of their family’s aspirations for socio-economic mobility through education and cultural attainment, evident in their ‘concerted cultivation’. The chapter draws on memories of childhoods in the past, together with contemporary children’s voices from the Growing Up in Ireland study, to reveal the extent of children’s agency, in particular the ways in which children have consistently ‘pushed back’ against adult constraints in different socio-historical contexts, finding opportunities for the construction of their own social and family worlds and, in the process, shaping the family and community lives of adults. The chapter explores how, in different ways, class differences mediated Irish childhoods and public discourses about the consequences for children of ‘failing’ families across all historical periods.Less

Meeting the Lost and the Dead

Elise Prébin

in Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption

This chapter explores the similarities between feelings for the lost and feelings for the dead to show that the televised family meetings in South Korea between transnational adoptees and their birth ... More

This chapter explores the similarities between feelings for the lost and feelings for the dead to show that the televised family meetings in South Korea between transnational adoptees and their birth parents represent a cathartic moment of potential closure for all parties. It considers how the meetings create relatedness, leaving open options of relationships—including the cessation of contact—but never reconstitute families according to the ideal model of biological kinship. It suggests that the convergence between a lost child given up for adoption and a dead child is analogous to the real wish to reintegrate the child in the family. It also discusses three options available to adults who have to deal with unwanted children in large families and children outside of the patriline: infanticide, child abandonment, and child circulation.Less