Long-term aspirations

labour market, their increasing contributions to the household economies, even if minimal, change gender relations both within households and in the market. Yet, direct change in terms of improvement of the lives of the girls and their households is rather minimal.

One visible impact of such migration is the changing composition of households, across places, and the creation of transnational households and transnational families. This also results in the changing position of women (and men) within the household and without power relationships regulating household relations.

On a visit to Helen’s house, I talked to her mother who came from Eritrea to join her three children. She commented on the impact of her children’s migration on her life in Eritrea:

I feel so bad because I am a mother, so a mother wants all her kids to be around her. But in Eritrea the life is too bad. So all my children are leaving. First it was Helen, then her younger brother, now Bana, the younger sister. It is too difficult to be a mother, a parent in one place, and all your children are in another place. For us, it is good to be together in one house. But now we all are in different places. Scattered… Even when I eat food I do not feel it is good for me to eat. I was born and grew up in a big family and now I have a big family [seven children], so I want all my family to be around me. I came here to Khartoum because my children asked me to come. And I want to live with them. But now, I left some children and my husband in Eritrea. This is also not good.

Another negative aspect for the families was well summarised by a Pentecostal pastor:

You see this is a real problem what happens to Eritrean families. The young people just go, and then the smugglers give them phones, and tell them to call the families. The families then hear the horrible stories and run around to collect money, from everyone, even from strangers.

This is very bad what happened to Eritrean family. It is very stressful for the parents. They just worry, and then they have terrible debts. The smugglers take even people from here for free, without money, because they know that once they reach Libya, the families will pay.

theory have the chance of visiting their places of origin, in reality most of the girls and young women were unable to do it. This was due to very low salaries and a lack legal papers, as well as migration restrictions for young people from Ethiopia to Sudan. Also, the girls realised that in Ethiopia they had limited work opportunities. Agaresh, a 35-year-old, who came to Sudan for the first time when she was 19, decided to return for good and open a beauty salon in Addis Ababa. She took her three children and went back. When I visited her in Addis Abba she told me that she had been staying with her parents without a job. The cost of opening up a business in the capital was too high, and she lost some 1,500 USD on just trying to find a premises. After seven months, she decided to return to Khartoum. She was planning to join her husband who was going to be resettled to Australia. Salam also thought about going back to Ethiopia. She said:

I will go back, the life here is too hard. I want to get married, my time is passing. And then, if it is too hard there, I will go to Saudi Arabia. I know that Arab countries are no good, but what if you have any choice , even if the life here is bad, if in Libya is bad, even if in Ethiopia is worse then what the solution? I will work there as a cleaner that is the only job they have.

Me: would you ever go through Libya like your friends to Europe?

Salam: Never, through Libya never! Even my friends did tell me the truth about the way, but when they ask me whether I am coming or not, I just said ok but at the end I told them that I will not come. I said I would go back to Ethiopia. They said that ‘it is better for you to go back because you cannot face the problems which we pass on the way, and we understand that you know the life we passed through, so your life is different from our life so it is better to go back to your country’.

Tsirite was not thinking of going back to Ethiopia.

I want my parents to be proud of me. I need to help them. They say that I should return, that we will manage. That I have already made a change. But I have been here for two years. I want to go to Libya. I want to go to London.

Me: It’s far you have to cross two boats. Do you know someone in London?

Tsirite: No

Me: What do you want to do in London?

Tsirite: I want to go there to work and get money so I can get a house in my country. I’ve been wanting to go to London through Libya since I was small. I can have my money. We are scared to go; they say Libyan guys take girls like us. Sometimes we’re scared but we want to go.

In London, they are educated and they know how to take care of people. But in the Arab countries I don’t want to go to Dubai because the people there are not nice. If you do one mistake then they say bad things to you. I’m willing to go to Europe but I can’t go through the processes [official resettlement or migration process]. All Eritreans are going through the processes.

These two narratives show that girls are aware of the hazards of the journey, and also the dangers of different migratory destinations. They were considering carefully the different options, taking into account the

experiences on the way versus the experiences in the places of destination. They realised that the simple return to Ethiopia was no longer possible, given their low position and financial instability.

All girls and young women interviewed for the research showed a great deal of resilience in their ability to confront the constraints, limitations, challenges and setbacks they have to face at home, during journey and at destination. A long term perspective on the a changing and relational nature of agency of young people reveal the important of analysing children and adolescents’ agency in relation to generational issues. Our findings expand Punch’s analysis, and show that in addition to exploring age relations across the life course as well as relationally between the generations, considering the role of siblings, birth order position, peers, friends and