Performing transnational family with the affordances of mobile apps: a case study of Polish mothers living in Finland

ABSTRACT

Affordances provided by digital technologies and mobile apps (WhatsApp, Skype, Messenger) help in maintaining familyhood. These mobile apps enable the creation of in-app family groups. They also afford image sharing, which is used for phatic purposes. Digital connectivity provides the illusions of togetherness and belonging, and allows for performing family in a transnational context (emotional transnationalism). However, it also generates the feelings of guilt through infrequent communication. In the auto-driven visual elicitation interviews, the study looks at family constellations and technologically mediated communication from the perspective of five Polish mothers living in Finland. Applying the technique of an interactive collage, participants visualised kinship relations, using colourful cards showing silhouettes of adults and children and icons of mobile apps. The findings reveal complexities in digitally mediated familyhood, performed in the polymedia environment and determined by technological affordances.

KEYWORDS:

• Affordances
• collage
• mobile apps
• Polish migrants
• transnational family
• visual elicitation

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 When looking for suitable human figures to print on the collage cards, I aimed for the most neutral ones, in a similar manner as in a language portrait technique. Thus, the figures did not have faces drawn, or any specific hairstyles or clothes. Instead, these were blank male and female silhouettes, distinguished into adults and children only by resizing the figures. When preparing the cards, I also considered including a gender-neutral figure. However, being familiar with a community cultural context, I was aware that this could have raised questions and confusion, possibly distracting study participants from the collage creation process. Interestingly, some of the study participants ignored the gendering issue when choosing cards for their collage. Instead, they focused on numbers of relatives (e.g. of children) and associated family functions (partner, aunt, etc.).

2 In studies of linguistic practices, participants are asked to draw into the non-gendered body silhouette any languages that mean something to them. This technique pioneered by Busch (2006) is termed a ‘language portrait’. An elicitation interview is conducted while the study participant is drawing, or immediately after the drawing is completed. The language portrait as a visual prompt is frequently applied in studies on multilingualism, also in transnational and migration contexts. The technique was used as one of the research components to create mediagrams in Lexander and Androutsopoulos (2019) study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [grant number 315478] and conducted as part of the project: What’s in the app? Digitally-mediated communication within contemporary multilingual families across time and space (2018-2022), led by Professor Åsa Palviainen, Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.