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On the Liveness of Mobile Phone Mediation: Youth Expectations of Remittances and Narratives of Discontent in the Cameroonian Transnational Family

Mobile Media & Communication, volume 3, issue 1 (2015), pp. 20-35
"Drawn from multisited fieldwork conducted among Cameroonians in Germany and Cameroon, the article reveals that the liveness of mobile phone communication influences expectations and narratives of remittances in Cameroonian transnational social relationships. These expectations are meaningful within a cultural context where economic resources are expected to flow from migrants to nonmigrants. As this case demonstrates, the general belief in nonmigrants' entitlement to the achievements of those who migrate regardless of their status abroad, also means migrant students are involved in remittances practices. The students are expected to remit and at the same time, they are conscious of their obligation to support people who stay back in the home country. As such, the mobile phone ideally provides an infrastructure through which monetary resources could be coordinated and channeled to Cameroon. While exploring this possibility of remittances transfer, I argue that instant communication contradictorily generates and fuels conflicts mainly as a result of unmet expectations of deploying the phone to directly request money from abroad." (Abstract)