2/28/2023 0 Comments Intimate communion pdf![]() In this article we compare accounts of mothers and children, and also the different qualities associated with letters and cassettes, such as temporality, materiality and the public-private distinction. Apart from fieldwork with mothers many of whom recall this early period of their migration as dominated by letters and cassettes, we also conducted fieldwork in the Philippines interviewing the now grown up children of these mothers. Mostly these are mothers separated from their families for almost the entirety of their children’s development. Our research is based on one-year long ethnography with Filipino migrants in the London and Cambridge areas, who had typically come to the UK after periods in the Middle East or Hong Kong and are employed as domestic workers or nurses. ![]() For mothers who had arrived in the UK in the 1970s this represented a period of almost two decades. Before the explosion of communication channels and opportunities brought about with the arrival of mobile telephony, cheap international calls and the internet in the late 1990s, communication between migrant parents and left-behind children was dominated by letters and cassette tapes. This paper provides a historical perspective on communication among Filipino transnational families. The main part of the article will attempt to partially verify this thesis by presenting the case study of a Filipino family living in Milan. ![]() The article will explore the use of media on the part of migrants and the role of the media not only in temporarily connecting them to their private homes or to their public sphere of origin, but also in recreating the ‘warmth’ of domesticity, in other words in ‘making them feel at home’. This article addresses precisely the universe of migrants, with the aim of demonstrating that this existential condition can be alleviated and eventually ‘domesticated’ (albeit temporarily) thanks to the media. A migrant who is far from his country, a seasonal worker or asylum seekers, all share a sense of displacement, more or less intense. Even those who are lucky enough not to be forced to abandon their home are at times obliged to be away from home temporarily. The condition of mobility, in all its spatial and temporal variations is a condition of daily life in a globalized world. According the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) there are 850 million international passenger arrivals each year and according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in 2008 there were 42 million refugees across the globe. ![]()
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