Doing kin work among Ghanaians home and abroad: A paradigm shift to ICT

• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Author: Amisah Zenabu Bakuri,Dilys Amoabeng
• Date: 01 April 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12838

RESEARCH

Doing kin work among Ghanaians home and abroad:

A paradigm shift to ICT

Amisah Zenabu Bakuri

1,2

|Dilys Amoabeng

3,4

1

University College Utrecht, Centre for

Conflict Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht,

The Netherlands

2

Faculty of Religion and Theology, Vrije

Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam,

The Netherlands

3

Amsterdam Institute of Social Science

Research, University of Amsterdam,

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

4

Department of Sociology & Anthropology in

the University of Cape Coast,

Cape Coast, Ghana

Correspondence

Amisah Zenabu Bakuri, Faculty of Religion

and Theology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,

De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The

Netherlands.

Email: a.z.bakuri@uu.nl

Funding information

The Dutch NWO funded the work conducted

for this article.

Abstract

Objective: We explore how information communication

technologies (ICTs) enable doing kin work through com-

munication and its impact on the well-being of Ghanaians

at home and abroad.

Background: Using ICTs has become a significant and

rapid way to keep in touch with family relations as they

are “scattered”across different geographic spaces within a

country and globally. In this digital age, families can

choose from a wide range of options that allows the com-

bination of textual, verbal, and visual interactions.

Method: This paper is based on observations, in-depth

interviews, and life stories collected over a cumulative

fieldwork period of 28months. A total of 40 Ghanaians

living in the Netherlands and 30 living in Ghana were rec-

ruited from 2017 to 2019 for this study.

Results: Through smartphones or messenger apps, people

share their life and provide care and support including finan-

cial, emotional, moral, personal, and communal attachment.

Conclusion: Doing family online involves a complex, open,

and hidden system of support, care, anxiety, and empathy.

Doing family online is an example of a social matrix in which

new patterns of social relationships, intimacies, care, and

intergenerational solidarities emerge and develop.

Implications: We propose that doing family online will

remain an integral means of connecting with family mem-

bers and other relations. It is therefore important that ICT

is made affordable, reliable, and secure as a way to

improve its use. This means that more innovation, devel-

opment, and research would be required.

KEYWORDS

communication, family, Ghana, ICT, migration, the Netherlands

Received: 30 May 2022Revised: 28 September 2022Accepted: 17 November 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12838

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

Family Relations. 2023;72:585–600. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare 585

Introduction

The concept of transnational families has shifted the perspective of the family as a bounded geo-

graphical unit to family as a social unit that can be maintained across distance and national

boundaries (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002). Despite the emotional suffering that results from geo-

graphical separation, family members can live “apart-together”(Baldassar & Merla, 2013)

through transnational family practices such as long-distance communication, return visits, and

remittances. Although there is abundant literature on transnational families, the majority of

these research works focus mainly on analyzing daily overseas transnational family interactions

that keep families functioning across geographical distance (e.g., Ahlin, 2020; Baldassar, 2008;

Poeze, 2019).

To our knowledge, few studies have investigated the day-to-day care work from the perspec-

tives of those who have not migrated and those who live in the same country but have family

members in different parts of the country, often called internal migration. This study attempts

to give equal attention to both migrants and nonmigrants within Ghana and those living out-

side Ghana. This approach enables us to investigate from both perspectives, the day-to-day care

work of doing family and the role that the internet, information, and communications technolo-

gies (ICTs) play in it. This means that the idea of doing family is not situated in a physical geo-

graphic place but can also be done online via ICT.

Traditionally, the notion of family, in the Ghanaian context, extends beyond just the rela-

tions based on marriage or lineage lines. Family is the conglomerate networks of kinships

sustained through the series of marriage, friendship, fostering, and adoptions among others

(Andrikopoulos, 2017; Coe, 2014; Nukunya, 1992). Irrespective of being either a matrilineal or

patrilineal kinship system, the notion of family represents the core of the social welfare, organiza-

tion, and security in most Ghanaian societies due to its fundamental role in reproduction, produc-

tion, distribution, and social control of fostering and adoptions among others (Abdullah, 2012;

Coe, 2014; Nukunya, 1992). The idea of being a family relation in most Ghanaian societies pro-

motes both a local and transnational socialization and its politics of belonging or kinship

(Abdullah, 2012;Owusu,2000). This is mostly due to the fact that the kinship system in Ghana

confers beyond the building of relationships to provide rights, obligations, inheritance of properties,

behaviors and practices, and protection of the well-being of its members.

Based on di Leonardo’s (1987) seminal work on kin work. We show the ways that family

relationships are often embedded within practices and activities that promote well-being. The

pursuit of well-being goes beyond personal aspirations, fulfilment, happiness, and desires; the

well-being of many people is also linked to their relations with others including those they con-

sider family (Bakuri, 2021). Thus, people have to “work”on relationships across time and

space. As a result, working on family relationships is influenced by one’s proximity to other

family members and that is where one is situated, socially and geographically, within the family.

Although care relationships are often embedded within tacit family practices, these relation-

ships need to be worked at.

The concept of kin work allows us to focus on the work that is involved in “doing”family

across boundaries. For family relations beyond the physical boundaries, doing family therefore

requires extra efforts and investment of time and resources (Nave, 2016; Dito et al., 2017). In

recent times, this means shifting the family interactions from the traditional structure into either

a hybrid or solely via online, commonly referred to as doing family online (Mazzucato

et al., 2015). Doing family refers to how family members cocreate a feeling of collective well-

being and daily interactions (Bakuri, 2021; Fischer, 2014). It stresses how people do family in

practice, in discourse, and recurrently. So, doing family involves a myriad of practices,such as

calling, spending time together, sharing resources, cooking, and visiting (Ahlin, 2020;

Bakuri, 2021; Poeze, 2019). These practices and the discourses about doing family interact over

time (Tissot, 2020).

586 FAMILY RELATIONS