Madianou, M., & Miller, D. (2012). Migration and new media: Transnational families and polymedia. London: Routledge. 175 pp.

摘要

The one a leading scholar in the sociology of media, the other an expert in material culture, Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller seem to have formed a dream team when they embarked on their mutual research project on transnational families and the role of ICTs. Migration and new media is the product of a three-year investigation on how transnational Filipino families, in particular mothers and children, sustain long-distance communication. Their book is both an account of their extensive fieldwork in the UK and the Philippines and a theoretical impulse within the field of migration and new media. Transnational families with parents living separated from their children are becoming increasingly common as a consequence of the feminization of labor migration and the growing demand for care and domestic workers in the West. Although a relatively recent topic of research, studies on transnational motherhood have revealed how the prevalence of transnational families have caused a 'care drain' or 'care deficit' in the global South, a phenomenon that indeed epitomizes larger inequalities in today's global political economy. The long-distance communication of these families now occurs through a plethora of media platforms within the new media environment (e-mail, instant messaging, social networking sites, webcam, ...). The basic premise of the study is that these media and the way they converge transform experiences of migration, parenting and the maintenance of long-distance family relations.