Watching them grow: Intergenerational video‐calling among transnational families in the age of smartphones

Abstract

This paper investigates the novel forms of intergenerational communication in transnational families introduced by the widespread use of video-calls on smartphones. Centring on the kin-keeping role of the mother, the study analyses 30 semistructured interviews with migrant Turkish mothers living in 10 different countries around the world, as the facilitators of video-calls and intergenerational mediators. It is argued that smartphone mediated video-calls add new dimensions to the communication that expand the possibilities of self-expression and bonding for the migrant child with their grandparents in the form of visual performance, spatial sharing and spatio-temporal longing, while offering new ways of carrying out traditional grandparenting roles in a digitalized setting. Such intergenerational communication is mediated by migrant mothers as manifested through the practice of simultaneous multigenerational communication engaging all three generations on different forms of exchange enabled by the device itself. Although the new generation born into the digital age struggle with the paradox of separation vis-à-vis virtual togetherness, everyday video-calls on smartphones not only help keep the image of 'family' alive for the migrant child, they also generate a circumambient virtual setting that permits the transfer of family This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The bright side of digitization: Assessing the impact of mobile phone domestication on left-behind children in China's rural migrant families

“…There is rich scholarship focusing on the uses of ICTs and its role in connecting the transnational migrants (Demirsu, 2022 ), transnational families (Hoang and Yeoh, 2012 ; King-O'Riain, 2015 ; Pajnik, 2015 ; Chen, 2022 ), and transnational mothering (Madianou and Miller, 2011 ; Peng and Wong, 2013 , 2016 ; Chib et al, 2014 ; Meyers and Rugunanan, 2020 ). These studies highlighted the usefulness of mobile phones in maintaining familial ties in migrant families by overcoming temporal-spatial-socio-separation, thus providing virtual presence of migrant parent(s) or co-presence to their left-behind children.…”

“…King-O'Riain ( 2015 ) also argued that, using Skype, transnational families practice simultaneous and ongoing belonging and create spaces of transconnectivity across distance. Live video calls mediated by mobile phones have added a new spatial dimension to the existing temporal dimension of everyday co-presence by allowing for greater room of self-expression and bonding in the form of visual performance, spatial sharing, and spatial-temporal longing between intergenerational family members of transnational migrants (Demirsu, 2022 ).…”