Intensive care: Mediatized parenting and the circulation of transnational family care between Hong Kong and the Philippines

Abstract

Studies of transnational families have explored the various approaches by which separated members of the family exchange care across distance. In the context of the Philippines, transnational caregiving is widely studied as transnational mothering, looking at how migrant mothers balance their breadwinning and mothering roles using available communications. In this article, I investigated how the circulation of global care among migrant families is increasingly and intensively mediatized in the past decades. Using Andreas Hepp’s (2013) mediatization approach and Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla’s (2014) care circulation framework, I conducted interviews with 20 migrant parents in Hong Kong and their 25 left-behind children in the Philippines to reveal the stories of how digital and convergent technologies have altered the communicative practices surrounding the four main modes of transnational care circulation: gifts, cross-border mobilities, remittances, and transnational communication. I have also found how mediatized parenting is now a more intensive and embodied mode of distant caring that has sustained families across borders. This study aims to contribute to the mediatization research paradigm and draw practical implications for sustaining families affected by this transnational phenomenon.