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Sent home: mapping the absent child into migration through polymedia

Sent home: mapping the absent child into migration through polymedia Thumbnail


Abstract

Migrants and their transnational families represent children on social networking sites, documenting child-rearing practices to enhance social mobility. This article identifies a new group of migrant children—those sent home to parents’ countries of origin for an imagined “good childhood.” It demonstrates that social networking sites (SNS) sustain these children and create new norms for publicness and visibility in transnational parenting. Exploring how families document child-raising across international boundaries, it shows how the trajectories of parenting relationships remain open ended. The article counters the predominant focus on transnational parenting as a kind of abandonment attached to left-behind children. Instead, it refocuses research on the opportunities polymedia affords to families to create and sustain intimacies, making the trajectories of migrant families and children increasingly dynamic. The article thus documents important shifts within the global migration—a transformation that requires changes in the way scholars approach transnational families and long-distance parenting.

Acceptance Date Dec 8, 2016
Publication Date Jan 1, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Global Networks
Print ISSN 1470-2266
Publisher Wiley
Pages 133-150
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12174
Keywords social networks, transnational families, transnational migrants, children, ICTs, citizenship
Publisher URL http://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12174

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