E-migrant Women in Catalonia: Mobile Phone Use and Maintenance of Family Relationships

Abstract

The rapid dissemination of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in contemporary societies has given rise to a new technological, geographical, and social (TGS) space that defines the e-migrant. This analytical perspective allows us to address the relationship between mobile phone use and the maintenance of family relationships from a distance. In this article, we focus on the transnational communication practices of three distinct groups of migrant women in Catalonia: Ecuadorian, Moroccan, and Romanian. The results show that the three groups of women tend to use mobile phone mainly for (transnational) family communications. Mobile phone use allows migrant women to move into a new TGS space where family relationships are significantly redefined in technological and geographical terms, but far less in social terms. Their self or socially perceived traditional family roles perpetuate, but in a different way, as distance transforms familial patterns of interaction