Filial technologies: transnational daughterhood and polymedia environments in transnational Taiwanese families

ABSTRACT

This study uses female migrants’ ‘transnational daughterhood’ within the context of transnational Taiwanese families as a case to examine how culturally constructed ideals of eldercare and information and communication technologies (ICTs) are interwoven in the context of transnational families. Filial piety is the traditional cultural norm in Confucian societies, which form parent–child relationships and eldercare practices in Taiwanese families. Through this research on transnational eldercare, the results will demonstrate how adult daughters construct their ‘transnational daughterhood’ by evoking filial norms, guiding their use of ICTs in polymedia environments. Through in-depth interviews with single migrant daughters from Taiwan to Australia, this research identifies ICTs that are stratified into three levels of filial piety, based on the principle that the more ‘social cues’ a particular media technology affords, the more filial it is. The findings in this study fill in the gaps in the existing literature by illustrating ‘transnational daughterhood’ and demonstrating that ICT-based filial practices are not only exercised by ICT-based co-presence, but also allow women, through virtual absence, to avoid unnecessary conflicts and worries with their aging parents at home. Therefore, daughters utilize different levels of filial ICTs to successfully manage their emotional relationship with their parents and fulfill their sense of filial responsibilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational daughterhood
• eldercare
• polymedia
• transnational family
• information and communication technologies

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Tingyu Kang, Nien-Hsuan Fang, and Yen-Feng Tseng for supporting and advising my research. The author would also like to thank the editors and anonymous referees of this article, whose helpful and engaged comments and suggestions greatly strengthened this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jaime (Feng-Yuan) Hsu

Jaime (Feng-Yuan) Hsu is currently a Ph.D. student at the Department of Sociology, University at Albany. His research interests lie in the intersections of immigration, gender, the family, and urban sociology. Email: [email protected]