Gender dynamics in Mexican migrant communities have been conceptualized mainly in terms of transformations in conjugal relations. Other meaningful relations, especially conflict‐laden female in‐law relations, have not been discussed widely in the context of transnational communities. I show how this wider perspective on gender relations is essential for unraveling the social processes behind the boom in house construction that many rural regions in Mexico are experiencing. A growing number of women reduce the length of their often very traumatic residence in their mothers‐in‐law's houses or try to avoid it altogether by creatively appropriating new spaces—building houses—using migradólares, remittances from their husbands who work in the United States. The newly built houses both constitute and express changing gender and kin relations. In the long run, these changes are likely to erode the social security of members of the elderly population. [migration, gender, kinship, postmarital residence, domestic space, social security, Mexico]

Marriage used to be widespread and common throughout Southern Africa. However, over the past decades marriage rates have substantially declined in the whole region. Marriage has changed from a universal rite of passage into a conspicuous celebration of middle class lifestyles. Bridewealth or lobola remains important and is supplemented by a plethora of new rituals and expenditures. Yet, despite marriage's recent turn towards exclusivity, the institution nevertheless continues to be an important frame of reference for most people. The contributions in this special issue explore reconfigurations of marriages and weddings in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia through the last decades. While there are numerous anthropological studies on marriage in Southern Africa for the period up to the 1980s, a remarkable paucity of studies has to be noted for the time since then. The ethnographic and comparative findings on Southern African weddings and marriages compiled in this special issue pick up an important anthropological legacy and stimulate future research and theorising.

The vacant retirement house has become a central feature of many areas of the Global South. Over the years,  migrants’ savings are invested in the building of conspicuous houses for retirement in their areas of origin. But  despite these substantial efforts, a number of migrants postpone their return or do not return at all. Their houses  remain empty, their purposes shifting as their owners reach old age. This stretching of time does not only affect  the migrants’ livelihoods and ideas of home. Furthermore, kin-scripts as conceptualized by Stack and Burton  (1993) are being reconfigured substantially. This goes hand-in-hand with the reframing of culturally prescribed  responsibilities, meanings, and social roles attached to certain stages of the migrants’ lives. Based on long-term  and multi-local ethnographic fieldwork in rural Mexico and urban Chicago since the 1990s, we analyze how  remittance houses are tied and untied with their owners’ life courses in the later stages of life. Furthermore, we  examine how kin groups on both sides of the border deal with the new challenges this entails.

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