ICTs and Transnational Families

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

This chapter begins with a literature review of transnational families and ICTs adoption. In the second section of this chapter, in order to further understand how ICTs are embedded in the lives of transnational Taiwanese daughters as this study aims to do, this study lays out the literature of daughters in Taiwanese family, encompassing daughter-father and daughter-mother relationships.

2.1 ICTs and Transnational Families

The transnational family, which was defined as families “that live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely familyhood” (Bryceson &

Vuorela, 2002, p.3) are increasingly popular forms of family units in contemporary society under the contexts of transnationalism. Transnationalism can be traced back to Randolph Bourne’s essay about the idea of a “trans-national America,” in which he observed the new immigrants that entered the United States. But Bourne did not focus on the forging of transnational ties between the countries of origin and host country (Cohen, 2008). In 1992, Glick Schiller and her colleagues pointed out that transnationalism referred to “the process by which immigrants build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of settlement” (Skrbiš, 2008;

Cohen, 2008). Therefore, the concept of transnationalism is that immigrants’ lives cut across national boundaries and bring two societies into a social field, which also means that even though immigrants are leaving from their countries of origin, they still hold ties to their social relations in their home countries.

Early studies of the transnational family focus on family separation and highlight

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emotional consequences, problems with decision-making and difficulties in raising children in host countries (Schans, 2009). Meanwhile, gender and transnational family studies explore responsibilities of transnational workers in their families, such as caring and earning (Kang, 2012). Unlike male workers who are usually perceived as breadwinners and have to work abroad to support their families in the global labor force, more and more female migrant workers are involved in the global care chain and are beginning to financially support their families too (Basa, Harcourt, & Zarro, 2011). This forms the consequence of the feminization of migration, which is addressed largely by transnational family studies that find female migrant workers who decided to work abroad have transformed their roles in their families from economic dependents into main financial supporters of their families and countries of origin. For example, many female migrant workers in South East Asia leave from their home countries to host countries such as Europe (Williams, 2012) and work as caretakers and housekeepers (Parreñas, 2005).

Such flows of individual mobilization have contributed to the development of transportation from country to country, the establishment of global enterprises, and the improvement of communication technology. Cohen (2008) demonstrated that the flows across nations resulted from new communication technologies and modes of transportation have produced transnational social relations. The concept of holding the family together through cohabitation and co-presence has diminished as a result of ICTs usage (Leifsen & Tymczuk, 2012). Various studies have addressed that regular communication, such as telephone calls, letters, SMS messages, and so on affects intimacy across borders and defines the transnational family’s everyday life (Asis et al.

2004; Levitt 2001). Especially the invention of the Internet has put the greatest influence on transnational communication (Şenyürekl & Detzner, 2009).

Transnational workers around the world now have more access than before to

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communicate with their families and friends in their home countries. In addition to cheap telephones calls, faxes, and emerging ICTs such as email, Internet sites and new media can provide a space for transnational activities and connections (Castells, 1998).

The popularity of social media, such as Facebook, Line, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and so on have created an online social space to communicate and interact with people in transnational contexts (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014).

Vertovec (2009) stated that one feature of new migrant transnationalism is that migrants continue to maintain strong connections of emotions, loyalty and affiliation with families, and their home country’s institutions and political organizations through technological contact. Apart from maintaining and reshaping transnational social relations, Wong (2005) demonstrated transnational individuals contain transformative identities and hybrid identities produced by ICTs. Therefore, transnational individuals use ICTs to reconstruct their fluid identity through interacting with their social relations such as families, friends and organizations in their countries of origin. Transnational workers can both maintain their intimate relationships with their families and reconstruct their subjectivity and roles with convenient accessibility of ICTs. For example, Filipino migrant mothers reconstruct their identity of motherhood with the implications of ICTs (Madianou, 2012).

Within the literature of ICTs and transnational family studies, many researchers draw on transnational parenthood (Hoang & Yeoh, 2012). Studies of transnational motherhood in particular are conducted more because of feminization of migration (Madianou, 2012). Madianou and Miller (2013) indicated that communication technologies can help transnational mothers to practice mothering and maintaining intimate relationships with their children. Besides, migrant mothers not only reinvent their motherhood through emotional support via mobile phones but also become a breadwinner who can renegotiate their status of being a mother in their families.

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Moreover, a growing numbers of researchers have conducted research on the relationships between migrant workers’ ICT usage and its implications for connectivity and empowerment (Thomas & Lim, 2011).

However, the roles of ICTs in the context of transnational families are not always positive in terms of intimate relationships. Inequality of power relations in transnational families are embedded in ICTs uses (Pribilsky, 2004; Hannaford, 2015).

For example, Hannaford (2015) claimed that overseas husbands utilize ICTs to monitor their spouses to restrict them at home. Cecilia Uy-Tioco (2007) also found that transnational mothers are still constrained by duties of caring and giving emotional support among other traditional gender roles, which may lead to a sense of guilt because of their absence. Even though transnational mothers and wives who are defined by traditional gender roles are widely discussed, transnational women as daughters in terms of social expectations and cultural norms, as well as their power relations with parents are rarely addressed in ICTs and transnational family studies.

The challenge of ICTs and transnational family studies is that ICTs are constantly changing and are affordable, widely accessible, and highly adaptable. ICTs have transformed the experiences of migration into a transnational process with family networks that have been redesigned but not lost (Bacigalupe & Lambe, 2011).

Therefore, more studies are needed to understand various emerging ICTs and examine how they are associated with each other (Madianou, 2012). Masianou and Miller (2013) coined the concept of “polymedia” to theorize the complexity of when users are faced with a wide range of new ICTs. Polymdia concentrates on the reasons behind the choices of different communication mediums. Users who choose multiple media not only rely on functional reasons but also rely on social and cultural factors in order to satisfy their emotional needs. The concept of polymedia is built on the idea that all kinds of ICTs get together as one media, and also suggests that technology and

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society are interacting with each other and are influenced by each other. Madianou and Miller (2013) demonstrated that there are three preconditions to have access to the environment of polymedia. First is access, which contends that users know how to have access to multiple medium; the second is affordability, which focuses on the cost of all kinds of mediums that can be afforded by users; third, and most importantly, is that users must understand how to produce content through different kinds of mediums and analyze the contents, which is called media literacy. Therefore, as the rise of the convenience brought about by ICTs becomes universal, users can adopt different kinds of media based on their personal and emotional reasons. Migrant workers will intent to control ICTs to maintain their relationship with their families by taking advantage of each medium offers (Madianou, 2014).

In particular, it is crucial to note that there are several factors that have an impact on ICTs adoptions among transnational families. The ability, accessibility, and affordance of transnational families to use ICTs is mediated by social and geographical factors in terms of the socio-economic status of the transnational family, the geographical location of transnational families (Şenyürekl & Detzner, 2009), and most importantly, the individual’s ability to utilize ICTs and the resources they offer (Dekker, & Engbersen, 2014). Furthermore, the ability and accessibility of ICTs are embedded in gendered and intergenerational differences (Hsu, 2011). Drawing on the concept of polymedia, this study examines the reasons behind various types of ICTs adoption in terms of social, cultural, and power-relation factors, which will be elaborated upon in this study to further explore whether the reasons for ICTs adoption are embedded within social and cultural factors of the roles of daughters.

In Taiwan, studies have also explored migrant women from South East Asia who keep in touch with their families and places of origin, thus acting as transnational daughters through phone calls, regular or irregular remittances, and visiting (Wang,

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2012). Still, the context of transnational daughters from Taiwan in other countries as migrant workers is not fully addressed. Lan (2008) also demonstrated that transnational migration studies mainly focus on women as mothers and wives, while studies of unmarried adult women are usually neglected. Thus this study intends to focus on unmarried adult Taiwanese women in the Netherlands as transnational daughters to explore their intimate relationships with their parents and the ways they use ICTs to practice the role of daughters as defined by traditional gender roles, in the context of the transnational family.