Migration, Transnational Families, and New Communication Technologies

Abstract

In this chapter, I will address the intersection between migration and new communication technologies. Drawing on a bottom‐up approach that puts migrant experiences at the heart of the analysis, the chapter observes how migrants use social and mobile media in the context of their everyday, transnational lives. The first part of the chapter surveys studies that have reported on the different ways in which new communication technologies are involved in a range of transnational practices such as information‐seeking, social networks and social capital, visibility and activism, and belonging. In the second part, I focus on one key theme of transnational migration, namely the ways in which members of transnational families care for each other at a distance using new media. The case of transnational communication in the family context also provides an opportunity to explore the cumulative and long‐term consequences of new communication technologies for the phenomenon of migration as a whole.