Digital media for intimacy?: Asian nannies’ transnational mothering in Paris

Abstract

ABSTRACTBased on a long-term ethnographic research on global nannies in Paris, this study presents the complexities of digital media use in the management of personal space and relational life by exploring how migrant mothers struggle to deal with transnational mothering. It critically analyses the potentials and limitations of digital media, mobile phones and the Internet in particular, in creating intimacy in material and symbolic ways across transnational spaces. It will argue that, while the perpetual connectivity of digital media in family life may appear to serve as an instrument of intimacy and empowerment for migrant mothers, it can also become new sources of digital fatigue and morality, double burdens and anxieties about the uncertain consequences of transnational communications.