Relative Distance : Kinship, Migration, and Christianity between Kenya and the United Kingdom EPUB

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, Leslie Fesenmyer's work 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.

Challenging a focus on changing modes of economic production, 'push-pull' factors, and globalisation as drivers of familial change, she analyses everyday trans-national family life.

Relative Distance shows how quotidian interactions, exchanges, and practices transform kinship on a local and global scale.

Through the prism of intergenerational care, Fesenmyer reveals that the question of who is responsible for whom is not only a familial matter but is at the heart of relations between individuals, societies, and states.