Transnational networks of care: Angolan children in fosterage in Portugal

Abstract

This article is about the informal circulation of children who migrate from Angola to Portugal without their birth parents or primary caretakers. It explores the motivations underlying kinship care, and the relationships through which child circulation is negotiated. In this discussion, I also look at how this practice is transformed by migration, turning local relations into transnational networks of care. Finally, I argue that child circulation as a social practice can create, maintain or lessen the amount of social capital of the people implicated.