Through the expansion and development of communication technologies,
transnational families
are presently experiencing that they are close despite the great geographical
distances between
them. On the basis of a qualitative study with transnational families, I show
that this virtual closeness
at a distance brings out new practices of familiarity, on the one hand, but also
produces conflicts
and dilemmas, on the other. While the new technologies of closeness enable forms
of everyday
interactions over great distances, the compression of time and space does not
take place in a vacuum.
Instead, family members are positioned at interfaces of structures of difference
and inequality,
which decisively influence access to and use of the new technologies and which
have far-reaching
consequences for the shaping of transnational family configurations.
Keywords: transnationalism, family, communication technologies, gender,
migration regime
