Relative distance

Project Lead: Leslie Fessenmyer

In her earlier research, Leslie looked at the kinship dilemmas that underlie transnational migration between Kenya and the United Kingdom and 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, her book, Relative Distance, shows how quotidian interactions, exchanges, and practices transform kinship on a local and global scale.

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, Relative Distance 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. Rather than focusing on changing modes of economic production, ‘push-pull’ factors, and globalization as drivers of familial change and transformation, Leslie Fesenmyer focuses on the micro-spaces of transnational familial life.

Through quotidian interactions, exchanges, and practices, she traces how migrant and nonmigrant kin stay engage in what she refers to as moral economies of transnational kinship. The book argues that the distance migration opens up between kin is where they express, negotiate, and transform what being related entails. Through the prism of intergenerational care, Fesenmyer reveals that the question, who is responsible for whom, is not only a familial matter, but is at the heart of relations between individuals, societies, and states.

• Project lead: Leslie Fesenmyer