Ghanaian Transnational Households and the Children “Left Behind”

Abstract The children of migrants who do not live with their biological parents are often labeled as “at risk,” vulnerable to “psychological impacts,” and assumed to experience multiple adversities because of parental migration. Representations of these “left-behind children” project a sense of neglect yet are largely understood within an individualistic, Western form of childhood that treats other forms of childhood as non-normative. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study of Ghanaian transnational households, including child-adult kin and kin-like relationships, this chapter highlights how intergenerational relationships and everyday practices of love, care, and solidarity are central to how children negotiate family separation, reunion, and cultural identities. Children’s ability to engage in relational and transient local and transnational practices cannot be understood merely as “fictive” given their embeddedness in extended family relations and social networks. Rather they are generated and sustained through daily practices, including telephone calls, domestic work, schooling, remittances, living together, and routine life celebrations within social spaces. Such activities are critical to establishing a sense of family feeling and closeness.