Onward Migration from an Aspirations–Capabilities Framework: The Multi-sited Transnational Practices of Sudanese Families Across Europe, Sudan and Beyond

Abstract

This chapter examines the multi-sited transnational strategies of Dutch-Sudanese migrants who move from the Netherlands to the UK (and/or elsewhere) to fulfil their aspirations at different migration and life-course stages. The ongoing political unrest and economic hardships in Sudan, together with the current restrictive European migration regimes, have led most Sudanese to move to Europe as asylum-seekers. Throughout the years, after obtaining refugee status and becoming European citizens, many settle and remain in the host countries of which they are citizens, while others move onwards to other EU countries (or elsewhere) as European labour migrants. As the migrants’ legal statuses change throughout these stages, so do their aspirations and their capabilities to achieve them. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic multi-sited fieldwork with Sudanese migrants and their families across the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan, this chapter explores the migrants’ aspirations and capabilities to migrate, which take place within given sets of perceived geographical opportunity structures. By looking at how these migrants navigate institutional limitations with family obligations, individual aspirations and capabilities, the chapter contributes to the conceptualisation of onward migration from the lens of an aspirations–capabilities framework. In so doing, it shows the importance of the family as the main unit of analysis in migration studies and the need to look at mobility as a multi-sited longitudinal family trajectory to fulfil changing aspirations where not all family members benefit equally.