Relative Distance: Kinship, Migration, and Christianity between Kenya and the United Kingdom
Leslie Fesenmyer
Jul 2023 · The International African Library Book 71 · Cambridge University Press
Ebook
243
Pages
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About this ebook
The socio-economic and political uncertainties of Kenya in the 1990s jeopardised what many saw as the promises of modernity. An increasing number of Kenyans migrated, many to Britain, a country that felt familiar from Kenyan history. Based on extensive fieldwork in Kenya and the United Kingdom, Leslie Fesenmyer's work provides a rich, historically nuanced study of the kinship dilemmas that underlie transnational migration and explores the dynamic relationship between those who migrate and those who stay behind. Challenging a focus on changing modes of economic production, 'push-pull' factors, and globalisation as drivers of familial change, she analyses everyday trans-national family life. Relative Distance shows how quotidian interactions, exchanges, and practices transform kinship on a local and global scale. Through the prism of intergenerational care, Fesenmyer reveals that the question of who is responsible for whom is not only a familial matter but is at the heart of relations between individuals, societies, and states.
About the author
Leslie Fesenmyer is Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Birmingham. She is currently leading a project on multi-religious encounters in urban Kenya funded by the European Research Council. Her research has been published in leading journals, including City & Society, Journal of Religion in Africa, and Social Anthropology.
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