Abstract This article examines how Ghanaian Pentecostals in Belgium negotiate vulnerability and agency within the context of “reverse mission.” Building on qualitative research and existing literature, the study argues that experiences of social exclusion, economic constraints, and cultural misunderstandings among Ghanaian Pentecostals in Belgium not only impede their missionary efforts but also catalyze innovative adaptation and revitalized religious involvement. By reframing migration as spiritually meaningful and deploying strategies such as the “mission from below,” these communities mobilize resources, empower youth, and negotiate belonging in a secular environment. The study highlights how theological narratives and adaptive practices transform marginality into missionary purpose, offering new insights into transnational Pentecostalism and the evolving nature of religious life in contemporary Europe.
Abstract This study interrogates the historically constituted modes of being of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, tracing their trajectories from the WENELA (Witwatersrand Native Labour Association) era to the present. It foregrounds the paradox of migrants as indispensable to South Africa’s economy yet rendered disposable through xenophobic violence, precarious legal status, and social exclusion. At the same time, it examines migrants’ lived experiences as a struggle for recognition in the face of systemic marginalization. It argues that the fate of Zimbabwean migrants is not merely a socioeconomic question but a philosophical one, revealing the tension between freedom and constraint, visibility and erasure, survival and dignity. Ultimately, the paper calls for a rethinking of migration policies and discourses that acknowledges migrants not as transient labor units but as human beings engaged in a dialectic of becoming in Southern Africa’s contested social landscape.
Abstract Drawing on doctoral research that examines the pregnancy, birth, and postnatal experiences of members of the South African diaspora who give birth in the UK , this paper explores some of the ways in which individuals navigate and (re)imagine their own and their children’s identities as both migrants and citizens in complex UK bureaucratic systems. Triangulating data gathered through autoethnography, interviews, and participant observation, it investigates how migrant motherhood is articulated in daily life, examining how women respond to these circumstances according to their own understandings of being South Africans in the UK , and how those understandings shape their experience as mothers. Through exploring how South African migrant mothers attempt to balance these transnational positionalities for themselves and their children, the article contributes to the existing literature on migrancy, maternal identity, and transnational parenthood more broadly.
Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine motherhood in diasporic contexts by analyzing the temporal and spatial networks that inform the practices and meanings of “othermothering.” Drawing from ethnographic data collected among migrant women between Cape Verde and Europe, the article discusses the role children play in family migration projects and illustrates how mobility is central to both mothers and children as they negotiate the present and imagine the future. The article contends that motherhood is shaped not only by personal experience but also by the networks that groups of women create together. These networks enable emigrant mothers to respond to the demands of motherhood in a social field that connects mothers and children through intricate relationships grounded in shared cultural repertoires.
Abstract This essay examines Congolese women’s efforts to navigate the asylum system on the edge of Europe and asks how women are forging futures for their children, even as states circumscribe the forms of intimacy, kinship, and reproduction they can enact. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Moscow among women asylum seekers, I present portraits of women’s efforts to sustain kinship ties and care for children, sometimes sustaining strong ties to Congo ( DRC ), and other times instead building new social ties to safeguard children born in Russia. I argue that migrant mothers’ decisions around kinship and efforts to imagine a future for their children are deeply entangled in the politics of the state in which they seek refuge, but also in the histories enabling their asylum.
