Transnational Anchoring, Gender Renegotiation, and Diaspora Family Life Architecture Among Nigerian Immigrants in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada: Implications for Social Work Education and Practice

This paper examines transnational family practices and gender role renegotiation among Nigerian immigrant families in the United Kingdom (UK), the United States (US), and Canada, drawing on a mixed-methods study comprising survey data from 150 respondents and qualitative thematic analysis of ten in-depth interviews. Financial remittances to Nigeria were engaged in by 90.0% of respondents, and a moderate positive relationship between transnational communication frequency and family cohesion was confirmed by Pearson’s correlation (r = .532, p < .001). A chi-square test confirmed a significant association between gender role change and spousal conflict (χ² = 18.42, p < .001). Two central theoretical contributions are made. The first is the concept of transnational anchoring the daily, embodied practices of food, language, digital kinship, intentional celebration, remittance obligation, and selective acculturation—through which Nigerian immigrants constitute diaspora identity and sustain family cohesion across distance. The second is a theorization of gender renegotiation as a contested, multi-directional process shaped by norms of patriarchal origin, egalitarian frameworks in host countries, and individual spousal orientation. Grounded in family systems theory (Bowen, 1978), transnational social work (Lyons et al., 2006), and postcolonial feminism (Bahri, 2009), the paper develops substantial implications for social work education in Nigeria and for international social work practice with Nigerian immigrant families. It is argued that social work curricula in Nigeria must integrate transnational family practice as a core competency, and that practitioners engaging with Nigerian immigrant families require culturally informed frameworks that recognize transnational practices as resources rather than problems and engage with gender renegotiation in contextually sensitive and gender-critical ways.