ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an ethnographic study of the material culture of post-Yugoslav migration from Belgrade, conducted in the period 2005–2006 in London and Belgrade. Most of the migrants had no intentions of moving back to Belgrade because of the children, as they wanted them to have a better future. The way this relation manifests itself, or in other words, the way that a relation between ‘mother-as-term’ and ‘child-as-term’ becomes apparent, M. Strathern calls ‘objectification’. In effect the mothers maintain a view of kinship that is close to that of Miller, while the children are striving for something closer to Strathern’s model. Relations between mothers and children are characterized by Strathern as ‘un-mediated’ because both mother and child have a direct impact on one another. ‘The capacity to have an unmediated effect’, argues Strathern, ‘creates a distinguishing asymmetry between the parties’.
