Expected Values for Children in Migration Decision-Making

“Every parent hopes to get a better future for their children, in particular education and the UK ranks the highest in the world” (Agnes, Kenyan). This statement summarises the sentiments that each mother, single, married, divorced or widowed felt during the time migration was being considered. Education is an important value in a child’s development, especially in terms of successfully accessing employment opportunities and establishing a particular status in society. On the other hand, the health and wellbeing of children were also listed as important values that the mothers expected from migration. However, the women’s responses revealed that certain events occurring in their respective communities also helped them to determine the values they expected their children to gain through migration.

Interestingly, there was a slight difference in the order of the values desired for their children by married women and those desired for their children by single, divorced or widowed mothers. Married women expected that their children would benefit from a good education in the UK, as expressed by Agnes. This was the expectation of all mothers, but single, divorced or widowed mothers considered it as a secondary motive in their migration decisions. This is due to the fact that they faced social problems in their communities which some believed would affect their children. For instance, Odera, who was a single mother, noted that as much as she wanted to migrate to provide her child with a better future, her foremost reason for migration was to escape the stigma of being a single mother in Nigeria.

In the following sections, I discuss further the assumed expected values that the mothers in this study hoped to achieve for their children through migration. These include education, health and wellbeing. In addition, I discuss how some women stated that they had failed to consider whether their children would adapt to their new surroundings.

a. Children’s Education

As mentioned earlier, married women with children considered the education of their children in their decision to migrate. This was sometimes based on the women’s

disappointment with the education systems in Nigeria and Kenya, some of them chose to take their children to private schools which were expensive. Patience (Nigerian) revealed that she and her husband wanted to provide their children with a good education which could give them a better socio-economic status in Nigeria. She stated that,

“if they [the children] grow up here [UK], if they do their primary school here, it would be better for them when they come back home. They will be in high places at home…they [will be] placed in high esteem when [they] say you are from UK”.

She presents the view that social status in Nigeria is associated with where you have lived and attained your qualifications. Agnes (Kenyan) concurred, underlying her admiration of British qualifications as a former graduate of a British educational university.

Deon (Kenyan) explained that “it is good to include the education of your children” in the family migration decision-making process. She also believed that the opportunity would give her children the chance to interact with other cultures as she saw value in learning about different people and their culture. She explained that when “moving away to somewhere else, you cannot do it by yourself”. When she announced her migration plans to her children, she received their approval. She shared the information on the employment opportunity given to her with her children which was perceived to have benefits for the whole family. This assisted her in making the final decision to migrate. For Deon, education could provide a space in which cultural exchange is encouraged through learning about differences between people and their cultures. Felicia and Afola wanted to give their children the opportunity to

access high quality education, but in the case of Afola, education became a secondary motive to the migration decision-making process.

In Ackers’s study (2000), some of the parents with children under the age of ten indicated that the children were not included or made aware of the migration plans until the final decision was made because the children were considered too young to contribute (2000: 6). This was the case with Patience who adopted the best interest and the future oriented consent approach which Ackers mentioned to ensure that the children consented to the move, even though in some scenarios in Ackers study the children objected. According to the responses of the mothers in my study, the children were excited about the move based on the images they had seen of the UK in different media. However, after migrating to the UK, some of the married and single mothers in the study revealed the difficulty for their children of adapting to a new environment.

Naomi (Kenyan), on the other hand, initially migrated temporarily to the UK, later became a permanent resident when she got a job that enabled her to fund her children’s education in Kenya. Naomi migrated when she was given the opportunity to attend her graduation ceremony in the British university where she had studied a Masters course

through distance learning, which was sponsored by her employer in Kenya. She indicated that while she was attending her graduation, she planned to explore job opportunities available to her as a trained nurse. Through personal networks in the UK, she was informed of work opportunities as a nurse and was advised to do an adaptation programme for overseas nurses. After completion of the adaptation course, she secured a job with a hospital in London where she began to work, still in the belief that it was temporary as she had every intention to return to Kenya. However, she found that she was financially better off in the UK and was in a better position to fund her children’s studies in Kenya. She, therefore, began to consider long- term settlement and began discussing the prospect of family migration with her husband. Her

husband was not ready to migrate as he had a successful business in Nairobi and, in Naomi’s opinion, he preferred that she returned to Kenya. Naomi was reluctant to do that because she knew her salary in Kenya even jointly with that of her husband, would not sufficiently fund their children’s education in the private schools they were attending or their future university education. In her opinion, her children’s education took precedence over her husband’s need for her to return.

However, when Naomi and her husband had agreed for the children to migrate, their visa applications were rejected and they were unable to join her in London. She continues to remain in the UK in order to finance her children’s education in Kenya. This contrasts with the other mothers in this study who were able to migrate with their children. Naomi can be viewed as a ‘transnational mother’ (Parrenãs, 2001) who sacrificed motherhood for her children to get ahead in life. Naomi’s husband has also made a sacrifice as she argues that he supported her choice to stay in the UK while being stigmatized as it is not normal for a man to look after children, especially amongst the Kikuyu ethnic group.

The presumed expected values that emerged from the responses of the mothers in my study relate to wealth and status for the children. According to De Jong and Fawcett (1981), wealth refers to the “economic reward[s] and factors contributing to wealth…wealth can be viewed as an end itself, but is also a means by which other goals may be satisfied” (1981: 49). Patience stressed that by receiving British qualifications and experience, her children could gain access to wealth and a better social status; a position supported by Agnes. Status, according to De Jong and Fawcett (1981: 49), can be viewed as “social standing or prestige”. The image presented by Patience, Agnes, Deon and most of the women in the focus groups (Kenyan, Nigerian and mixed) reveals that status can also be affiliated to a place. The fact that an individual once lived in or was born in the UK is a status symbol on its own. The UK has been marketed variously by the media and by the migrants themselves. Some return to

their country of origin and are assumed to be wealthy because of their westernised dress code and behaviour. Even though this is not a behaviour which some of the mothers condone, they realise that in the eyes of Nigerians and Kenyans back home, their children would be seen to have ‘made it’ and that status will reflect positively on them.

Aside from education and cultural exchange, some of the mothers in this study revealed that events occurring in their society of origin put them in a position where migration became their only option. This was mostly common for the single, divorced or widowed mothers as well as some married mothers who experienced events in their local community which made them consider the health and wellbeing of their children before their educational needs. This is the focus of the next section.

b. Health and Wellbeing

In my research, health is used to refer to the physical and mental condition and wellbeing of children. I discuss how the impact of social conditions on children’s health and wellbeing becomes an important factor for mothers to consider in the migration decision- making process. In terms of health, Renee (Nigerian) revealed how the physical condition of her child played a part in her decision to migrate. Her son was born with sickle cell anaemia and had been undergoing regular treatment in Nigeria for his condition. Towards the end of the 1990s, her doctor informed her that her son needed a kidney transplant, a procedure that Nigerian hospitals were not equipped to conduct, but recommended a hospital in

Hammersmith, London. She stated that there was no discussion about who was going to accompany her son to London as she argued that “nobody can do like a mother”. Her husband played a vital role in funding the trip through an agreement with the company he worked for, which included maintenance and medical expenses for the procedure. They both decided that their other son would also travel to London to donate his kidney to his brother.

Renee migrated as a ‘trailing mother’ (Cooke and Bailey, 2001) as she sacrificed her career and lifestyle to tend to the needs of her ailing son. Cooke and Bailey’s study (2001) revealed that women are more likely to migrate as a trailing wife or mother due to their home making and parental roles and their need to provide care to their children. By stating that “nobody can do it like a mother”, Renee refers to the emotional and psychological support a mother can offer a child as she believed that her husband would not be able to handle the pressure of such a situation and offer the same emotional support as she could to their son. She underlined the fact that she “didn’t have a mind to leave Nigeria”, but that ceased to become a choice when the health of her son became life threatening. Renee’s experience explains that sometimes some decisions cannot be discussed but must be acted upon. As a mother, she asserted her right to provide her child with comfort during the procedure.

Renee raised the importance of considering the wellbeing of children. This was presented in a different context by some of the single, divorced and widowed women. Jennifer (Kenyan), Odera and Afola (Nigeria) were women who fell into these categories. Jennifer (divorced mother of three) was living in Nairobi under very poor conditions because when she divorced her husband, she was left to provide for her children without his support which proved difficult. She explained that she tried everything to support her children and to remove them from a life of poverty but failed. She described her disappointment when she became the victim of a government scheme purporting to provide employment opportunities for people on cruise ships but which sunk her further into debt. Her main priority was to find a way out of poverty for her children’s benefit who she said had begun to take matters into their own hands by hawking and begging in the streets. As she saw the effects of poverty on her children, she began to consider migration as an option after seeing the economic

However, she explained that she had to ask her children for permission as it meant her leaving them behind. Her primary motive for migrating was to improve the wellbeing of her children by removing them from the poor conditions in which they lived and this, in her opinion, could only be achieved by migrating to the UK. Her children allowed her to migrate on condition that she did not overstay like some of their uncles had done before. That was the only condition laid down by her children which she did not want to break but eventually did as things did not shape up as she had planned. The conditions faced by Jennifer and her children in the slum in Nairobi reveal more pressing issues than education including the safety and wellbeing of her children. As a woman, Jennifer appeared strong enough to deal with the conditions she faced, but did not believe that the conditions were good for her children. Her decision, therefore, was provoked by the effects of poverty on her children’s wellbeing and revealed that children have a say in the decision to migrate especially if it benefits them. However, Jennifer did not indicate that she was stigmatised for being a divorced mother.

Odera (Nigerian) was a single mother at the time migration was being considered. Prior to having her son, Odera had already made the decision to migrate but the act itself took long to materialise. She was not married at the time she had her son but was aware of the stigma attached to single mothers. She explained that,

“being a single mum back home. They look at it like that is a curse. If I say I am a single mum back home, they will say are you ok? It doesn’t exist”.

Odera indicated that she was not prepared to deal with the stigma of being a single mother. She stated that the birth of her son sped up her decision to migrate and became the primary reason for her migration as she wished to take better care of him but at the same time escape the stigma of being a single mother in Nigeria. In this sense, her motivation for migration can

be viewed as her own self-interest but at the same time it took into account the needs of her newborn son.

Afola (Nigerian), on the other hand, made the decision to migrate with her husband before he died. She was stigmatised after his death by her in-laws who blamed her for his death yet her husband died from a life threatening disease. She became concerned about the effect the treatment she received from her in-laws would have on her children, suspecting that they may have attempted to kidnap her children. Her in-laws were aware of her migration plans and her mother-in-law did not support them as Afola was migrating for further

education, which her mother-in-law did not feel she needed. As Afola was concerned for the safety of her children, she looked for advice from her local pastor on how to present the final migration plans to her in-laws. She did not want to disconnect her children from their father’s side of the family but also did not want them to be affected by the actions of the family members. She stressed that she did not need consent from her in-laws to process the

children’s passports and permission to migrate with her children, though her brother in-law did not believe that women could “inherit” children. As the departure date drew closer, her pastor advised her to go on her own to inform them, judge their reaction to the news and decide what steps to take next. The reception she received when she presented the news to them led her to believe that her in-laws may have had bad intentions as they were physically and verbally abusive to her. Based on their reaction, she acted quickly and arranged for her children to be moved to Lagos where she would join them when it was time to leave.

The main issue of concern for her children was their safety based on the actions and intentions of her in-laws. This can be linked to their wellbeing because had her suspicions materialised, then her children would have been subjected to psychological trauma in terms of understanding why their grand-parents took them away from their mother and why their mother was lost to them. She did indicate that she did not want her children to lose contact

with their father’s side of the family, stating that it was important for them to keep in contact with them. As a mother, she used her instinct to protect her children from harm even if it put her in harm’s way. She indicated also that when her husband was alive, they had agreed that their children’s education was the most important factor in their decision to migrate. Safety was also a concern found in Hutchins’ study (2011: 1227) when one of her participants mentioned that she was concerned about the effect the local environment (e.g. pollution, rough neighbourhoods) was having on her children, which is different from the safety highlighted by Afola. Afola also knew that this decision would provide her children with the opportunity to get ahead in life by receiving an education in the UK.

Afola can be said to have considered the comfort and safety of her children as they would benefit from living in a safe environment away from her community in Nigeria. She was more concerned about the effects her in-laws’ behaviour would have on her children. In addition, Afola explained that she did not agree with certain practices and beliefs amongst the Cham people and thought that the migration opportunity would take her children away from