The interplay between agency and restrictions and between dreams and realities form the core of the contributions to this special issue. How do contemporary migrants from Africa manoeuvre in the interfaces of family demands, state control and personal desire? This special issue brings together six anthropological case studies and a photographic essay that explore family dynamics in contemporary transnational African migration to Europe, focussing in particular on the gender and intergenerational ties and tensions. Ethnographical descriptions point to the various forms of having family at home, abroad, and on the road, and stress the uniqueness of individual experiences in everyday practice. The articles also illustrate the fluidity of migration and the ways in which migrants need to change their itineraries as a result of unforeseen events, the means they use to cope with and adapt to new situations, and most of all the ways African migrants display inventive ways of dealing with pressures from their relatives back home, on the road, and in Europe.