Abstract
This paper proposes the concept of the ‘digital glimpse’, which develops the existing framing of imaginative travel. Here it articulates the experiences of mobile workers digitally connecting into family life and everyday rituals when physically absent with work. The recent embedding of digital communication technologies into personal relationships and family life is reconfiguring how absence is experienced and practiced by workers on the move, and through this, new digital paradigms for life on-the-move are emerging. This paper explores how such social relationships are maintained at-a-distance through digital technology – using evidence from qualitative interviews with mobile workers and their families. Digital technology now enables expressive forms of ‘virtual travel’, including video calling, picture sharing, and instant messaging. This has implications for the ways in which families can manage the social and relational pressures of being apart. Experiences of imaginative travel created through novel media can enrich the experience and give a greater sense of connection for both those who are at home and those who are away. While technology is limited in its ability to replicate a sense of co-presence, ‘digital glimpses’ are an emergent set of sociotechnical practices that can reduce the negative impact of absence on family relationships.
Highlights
Travel for work has increased over time, despite the potential of information and communication technology to substitute trips, and a large number job roles involve travelling
We argue that it is important to understand how technology is shaping the experience of absence in novel and emergent ways, and that the implications for maintaining family relationships under these mobility circumstances are critical to new perspectives on work/life balance, and potentially for the health and wellbeing of the workforce
Our study presents the new concept of digital glimpses back into home, taking existing discourses of imaginative travel and turning the focus away from the exotic and instead towards the mundane – seeking to understand how the everyday experience of home and family life is transmitted, experienced, and shared at-a-distance
Summary
Travel for work has increased over time, despite the potential of information and communication technology to substitute trips, and a large number job roles involve travelling. Mobile phones, Skype/FaceTime, blogs, social networking sites, and chat rooms have all become important to maintaining relationships with people that might be scattered across physical space (Larsen et al, 2006; Stewart Titus, 2012) Such technologies and associated platforms (e.g. social media) afford social opportunities for experiencing at-a-distance – whether this be a particular location, a child’s birthday party, an evening meal, or many other family activities – in a number of synchronous and asynchronous ways. This paper questions in particular what the implications of imaginative travel through digital technology are for a mobile worker seeking to connect back in to an everyday experience of home and family life It is focused on mobile working as a practice that may create shorter or longer absences, but may be contextually different to those experiences of migrants. It will interrogate to relationship between family, absence, and digital technology from the perspective of experiences of virtual presence and imaginative travel
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