Communications technologies and transnational networks

Abstract

This chapter presents a concise summary of the literature that has informed the way we think about the relationship between communications technologies and their impact on transnational networks. We focus on communications practices, or how technologies are a key part of transnational networks that shapes migrant experiences of family and other social networks. Firstly, we outline scholarship that has focussed on communication technologies prior to the ubiquity of digital media: phone calls, letters and audio cassettes in relation to the maintenance and transformation of transnational networks. Secondly, we trace the impact of social and digital media in communication within transnational networks. And thirdly, we draw on our own ethnographic research in communication technologies and transnational networks in the Caribbean, combining over twenty years of experience in the Jamaican context and ten years of experience in the Trinidadian context. Through these ethnographic studies, we reflect on our research on cellular, mobile and social media technologies in transnational relationships.