Family from afar: Moroccan migration, family practices and the transnational social space

This dissertation is situated at the crossroads of migration, family and transnational studies. It explores families that span multiple cities and countries due to the migration of one or more relatives and analyzes their subsequent construction and reconstruction of familyhood across national borders. Through a multi-sited qualitative study into Moroccan family networks with residential nodes in Liège, Belgium and Oujda, Morocco, but also several other destinations, Caroline Zickgraf considers both the material and non-material functions of transnational family practices that together produce and inflate transnational social spaces. She treats both the social and physical geographies of these networks in order to understand how the circulation of people affects the circulation of care but also treats the tensions and asymmetries that characterize their multi-directional cross-border exchanges.