Skype Mothers: Technology, Multi-Directional Care in the Transnational Filipino Family

This paper explores the redefinition of the roles and operation of the Filipino family for migrant and non-migrant members. Scholars have posited that “transnational motherhood” has reorganized they way that migrant mothers make meaning and participate family life in both of their host and home contexts. This paper posits that through strategies of “multi-directional care,” care work for transnational families go both ways: non-migrant family members actively partake in caring for their migrant family members. The main findings in the paper highlight the use of video computer technology to make meaning of familial roles that usually necessitate physical presence such as discipline and care work. The new development in technology for Filipino migrants to communicate with a visual register taps into a different texture of affect and communication from afar. The inventive experiences and approaches of Filipino families stretched over time and space allows us to see how the global has been sutured into the intimate parts of social life. In an increasing neoliberal world, understanding the changes in the family can also help us to understand the social processes that insist on conditions of separation and individuation