This paper explores the role of imagination in the lives of Nigerian transnational children and their migrant parent in Ireland. Migration of a parent is a rupture in a child’s life that triggers imaginary processes that are real in their developmental consequences. Following Zittoun and Gillespie, imagination is a process that generates a disjunction from the person’s experience of the “real” world, and uncouples and loops out before it eventually comes back to the actual experience. For the left-behind child, this imaginative loop remains “open” as parents return becomes extended in time. The dilemmas for the migrant parent and child are explored.
BaldassarL. (2008).
Missing kin and longing to be together: Emotions and the construction of co-presence in transnational relationships. Journal of Intercultural Studies,
29(3), 247–266.
2.
BrycesonD. (2018).
Transnational families negotiating migration and care life cycles across nation-state borders. Journal Ethnic Migration Studies,
45(16), 3042–3064. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1547017
3.
BrycesonD.VuorelaU. (2002). Transnational families in the twenty-first century. In BrycesonD.VuorelaU. (Eds.), The transnational family: New European frontiers and global networks.
Berg Publishers.
4.
CarlingJ. (2008).
The human dynamics of migrant transnationalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies,
31(8), 1452–1477.
5.
Central Statistics Office (CSO) (2012). Statistical Yearbook of Ireland 2012. Central Statistics Office.
6.
ChamberlainM.LeydesdorffS. (2004).
Transnational families: Memories and narratives. Global Networks,
4(3), 227–241.
7.
DrebyJ. (2010). Divided by borders: Mexican migrants and their children.
University of California Press.
8.
GergenK. (2015).
From mirroring to world-making: Research as future forming. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour,
45(3), 287–310.
9.
GillespieA. (2012).
Position exchange: The social development of agency. New Ideas in Psychology,
30, 32–46.
10.
GlaserB.StraussA. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory strategies for qualitative research.
Sociology Press.
11.
HallB. J.GarabilesM. R.LatkinC. A. (2019).
Work life, relationship, and policy determinants of health and well-being among Filipino domestic workers in China: A qualitative study. BMC Public Health,
19(1), 229.
12.
HoangL. A.YeohB. (2012).
Sustaining families across transnational spaces: Vietnamese migrant parents and their left-behind children. Asian Studies Review,
36(3), 307–325.
13.
HochschildA. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling.
University of California Press.
JosephsI. (1998).
Constructing one’s self in the city of the silent: Dialogue, symbols, and the role of “as-if” in self-development. Human Development,
41, 180–195.
16.
KomolafeJ. (2008).
Nigerian migration to Ireland: Movements, motivations and experiences. Irish Geography,
41(2), 225–241.
17.
LahaieC.HayesJ.Markham-PiperT.HeymannJ. (2009).
Work and family divided across borders: The impact of parental migration on Mexican children in transnational families. Community, Work and Family,
12(3), 299–312.
18.
LamT.YeohB. (2019).
Parental migration and disruptions in everyday life: Reactions of left-behind children in Southeast Asia. Journal Ethnic and Migration Studies,
45(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1547022
19.
MazzucatoV.CebotariV.VealeA.WhiteA.GrassiM.VivetJ. (2015).
International parental migration and the psychological well-being of children in Ghana, Nigeria, and Angola. Social Science & Medicine,
132, 215–224.
20.
MazzucatoV.SchansD. (2011).
Transnational families and the well-being of children: Conceptual and methodological challenges. Journal of Marriage and Family,
73(4), 704–712.
21.
MorganD. (2011). Rethinking family practices.
Palgrave MacMillan.
22.
OkunolaR.IkumolaA. (2010).
Child labour in fostering practices: A study in Surulere Local Government Areas Lagos State, Nigeria. The Social Sciences,
5(6), 493–506.
23.
OniJ. (1995).
Fostered children’s perceptions of their health care and illness treatment in Ekiti Yoruba households, Nigeria. Health Transition Review,
5, 21–34.
24.
ParrenasR. (2001). Servants of globalization: Women, migration and domestic work.
Stanford University Press.
25.
PengY.WongO. (2013).
Diversified transnational mothering via telecommunication: Intensive, collaborative and passive. Gender and Society,
27(4), 491–513.
26.
PoezeM.DankyiE. K.MazzucatoV. (2017).
Navigating transnational childcare relationships: Migrant parents and their children’s caregivers in the origin country. Global Networks,
17, 111–129.
27.
Reception & Integration Agency (2019). Reception and Integration Agency House Rules and Procedures for Reception and Accommodation Centres. Department of Justice and Equality.
28.
RenneE. (1993). History in the making: An anthropological approach to the demographic analysis of child fostering in Southwestern Nigeria [Paper presentation]. International Population Conference, 24 August–1st September, Montreal, Québec, Canada, Vol. 4.
29.
VealeA.AndresC. (2014). ‘I wish, I wish … ’ mobility, immobility and the global ‘imaginings’ of Nigerian transnational children. In VealeA.DonaG. (Eds.), Child & youth migration: Mobility-in-migration in an era of globalization (pp. 140–162).
Palgrave Macmillan.
30.
VygotskyL. (2004).
Imagination and creativity in childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology,
42(1), 7–97.
31.
WetherellM.McConvilleA.McCreanorT. (2019).
Defrosting the freezer and other acts of quiet resistance: Affective practice theory, everyday activism and affective dilemmas. Qualitative Research in Psychology,
17(1), 13–35.
32.
WhiteA.DitoB.VealeA.MazzucatoV. (2019).
Transnational migration, health and well-being: Nigerian parents in Ireland and the Netherlands. Comparative Migration Studies,
7(1), 44.
33.
ZittounT. (2007). The role of symbolic resources in human lives. In ValsinerJ.RosaA. (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 343–361).
Cambridge University Press.
34.
ZittounT.GillespieA. (2016). Imagination in human and cultural development. Cultural dynamics of social representation.
Routledge.
