How do parents and children care for each other when they are separated because of migration? The way in which transnational families maintain long-distance relationships has been revolutionised by the emergence of new media such as email, instant messaging, social networking sites, webcam and texting. A migrant mother can now call and text her left-behind children several times a day, peruse social networking sites and leave the webcam for 12 hours achieving a sense of co-presence.
Drawing on a long-term ethnographic study of prolonged separation between migrant mothers and their children who remain in the Philippines, this book develops groundbreaking theory for understanding both new media and the nature of mediated relationships. It brings together the perspectives of both the mothers and children and shows how the very nature of family relationships is changing. New media, understood as an emerging environment of polymedia, have become integral to the way family relationships are enacted and experienced. The theory of polymedia extends beyond the poignant case study and is developed as a major contribution for understanding the interconnections between digital media and interpersonal relationships.
Author(s): Mirca Madianou, Daniel Miller
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2012
Language: English
Pages: 175
City: Abingdon
Tags: anthropology, communication studies, media studies, migration studies, new media
Front Cover
Publication Data
Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Global migration and transnational families
Transnational communication and new media
Transnational motherhood: normativity and ambivalence
Overview of the book
2. The Philippines and Globalisation - Migration, mothering and communications
Philippine migration
The UK-based Filipino population
The cultural contradictions of Filipino motherhood
ICTs and digital literacies in the Philippine context
The Filipino telecommunications landscape
The OFW market
Conclusion
3. Why They Go - And Why They Stay
Why they go
Trajectories
Between need and aspiration: children's education and building the house
Other structural factors: unemployment and the absence of a welfare state
Relationship breakdown, domestic violence and gender inequalities
Self-improvement, maternal ambivalence and social status
Collective parenting
Culture of migration
Why they settle
Economic and other structural factors
Personal development and identities: the ambivalence of transnational motherhood
Conclusion
4. Letters and Cassettes
Letters: materiality and personality
Cassettes: emotion and presence
Temporality and performance
Public-private
Conclusion
5. The Mother's Perspective
Intensive mothering at a distance
Structural factors
'A more complete experience of mothering'
Conflict and the burden of communication
Maternal identities and ambivalence
Emotionality and mothers' own needs
Conclusion
6. The Children's Perspective
When it does not work
When it does work
Age, media and the pre-existing relationship as factors
The wider family relationships
Access and cost
Would co-presence be different?
Relationships as mediation
Conclusion
7. The Technology of Relationships
The phone and computer as objects and technologies
Voice-based communication
Text-based communication
Texting
Email
Instant messaging (IM)
Multimedia communication
Social networking sites (SNS)
Blogging
Webcam
Conclusion
8. Polymedia
Sociality
Power
Emotions
A theory of polymedia
9. A Theory of Mediated Relationships
Media constituting relationships
Ideal distance and 'pure' relationships
Polymedia and emotional management
Conclusion
Appendix - A note on method
Notes
1. Introduction
2. The Philippines and Globalisation - Migration, mothering and communications
3. Why They Go - And Why They Stay
5. The Mother's Perspective
7. The Technology of Relationships
8. Polymedia
9. A Theory of Mediated Relationships
References
Index
Also from Routledge...
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Fifty Key Anthropologists
When Religion Meets New Media
