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I don’t want to have a separated home’: reckoning family and return migration among married Nigerians in China

The growing ‘Africans in China’ literature has documented the extent and extensiveness of flows from Africa to Chinese cities. However, return migration has not received much attention, and even less is known about the role of the family in return consideration. The article focuses on how married Ni...

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Published: 2020
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LEADER 00000njm a2000000a 4500
001 oai:repository.ui.edu.ng:123456789/8217
042 |a dc 
720 |a Adebayo, K. O.  |e author 
260 |c 2020 
520 |a The growing ‘Africans in China’ literature has documented the extent and extensiveness of flows from Africa to Chinese cities. However, return migration has not received much attention, and even less is known about the role of the family in return consideration. The article focuses on how married Nigerians reckon return and family in Guangzhou city using data from ethnographic observations and interviews with 25 participants. While the family is central to how married migrants think about return, the dynamics vary among the participants. Migrants whose spouses/children reside in Nigeria complain about being distant from their families and the challenge of unification and ‘absentee fatherhood’. Nigerian couples that live in Guangzhou as a family consider the high cost of raising children and the future competitiveness of their children as ‘China-educated’ as factors in return calculations. Moreover, despite living with their husbands in China, some Nigerian women desire to return to Nigeria to improve their lives, but they did not embark on a return journey to avoid family separation. Among Nigerians in an interracial relationship with Chinese women, the feeling of (un)belongingness resonates in their return consideration owing to poor experiences with access to residence permit and social welfare. While integration issues impact on return migration of married Nigerians in Guangzhou, the transnational practices of the men suggest that a return behaviour would probably accompany return consideration. 
024 8 |a 2049-5846 
024 8 |a ui_art_adebayo_i_2020 
024 8 |a Migration Studies 8(2), pp. 250-270 
024 8 |a http://ir.library.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/8217 
653 |a Africans in China 
653 |a Interracial marriage 
653 |a Return migration 
653 |a Social integration 
653 |a Guangzhou 
245 0 0 |a I don’t want to have a separated home’: reckoning family and return migration among married Nigerians in China