Transnational Mothers and the Law: Ghanaian Women’s Pathways to Family Reunion and Consequences for Family Life

Abstract

How migration policies affect family mobility and relationships is a new and emerging area of study within transnational family literature. This chapter contributes to this literature by providing an in-depth examination of Ghanaian migrant mothers’ encounters with Dutch family migration policies and the impacts such policies have on their pathways to family reunion and the consequences for family relationships. The data come from qualitative research with 32 female Ghanaian migrants in The Netherlands. Adopting a gender-sensitive approach, our study shows discrepancies between the normative frameworks that underlie formal conditions to family reunion and female migrants’ family lives. Moreover, it shows that restrictive migration policies constrain women’s flexibility, a key aspect of Ghanaian family life, and shape dependencies and inequalities within families. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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