The Role of Mobile Apps in Transnational Family Connections and Emotions from the Perspective of Mexican Migrants in Australia

ABSTRACT

Digital technologies and mobile apps provide migrants connectivity that helps alleviate the distressing experience of being separated from their families, as they endeavour to integrate socially and culturally into a new nation. In this article, we highlight the role played by communications technologies in maintaining family ties and emotional support transnationally among middle-class individuals. Building on the notions of transnational families, social media research and emotions, we examine the particularities with which migrant family members stay in touch across borders. In this context, emotions arise from the heartache experienced due to the separation from family. Drawing from qualitative data collected in 2010–2011 and in 2021 among middle-class Mexicans living in Australia, we show how digital communications are used to connect with the homeland and analyse the emotions associated with being separated from family. Given the middle-class status and aspirations of these migrants, it is noteworthy to highlight the relevance they attribute to kin in the homeland and contact with them. Existing research about Mexican im/migrants in Australia is limited. This study contributes to the growing body of research on the intersection of transnational family life, emotions arising from mobility, and digital media use.

KEYWORDS:

• Mexican migration
• emotions
• transnational families
• Australia
• digital communications
• middle-class

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For the project conducted between 2010 and 2011 by Vázquez Maggio, the Arts, Humanities & Law Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel of the University of New South Wales granted ethics approval, number 09 2 199. For the project conducted in 2021 by Mejía and Vázquez Maggio, the RMIT Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) granted ethics approval, number 2021-24779-15599.

2 For further details of the living conditions, social exclusion and disenfranchisement of Indigenous people in Australia, for example, see Howard-Wagner (2018).