"I hear you as if you were next door”. Information and Communication Technologies Uses in Transnational Migratory Contexts

Abstract

In this work I offer a brief overview of my doctoral thesis research, which is aimed at analyze the role of Information and Communication Technologies in the development of transnational bonds. On the basis of a data production device consisting of in-depth interviews, I have identified technological uses, presences, and appropriations through which transnational migrants manage to communicate and relate across distance, as well as the effects, dynamics and practices that characterize their transnational way of life. Practices such as the unfolding of technologized proximities, connected presence, affective work and care, allowed me to offer an account of the ways through which migrants get to be some places without really being there. This kind of practices allows migrants to live simultaneously between one place and the other, and fosters the emergence of new forms of social organizations, such as transnational families, enabled to be and to make family across/in spite of distance and through ICTs.