4 Polymedia Communication and Mediatized Migration: an Ethnographic Approach

This chapter investigates the cumulative consequences of new communication technologies for the phenomenon of migration. Drawing on a five-year-long comparative and multi-sited ethnography of long-distance communication within Filipino transnational families I demonstrate that the recent convergence in new communication technologies has profound consequences not just for the migrants and their left-behind families but for the phenomenon of migration as a whole. Although new media cannot solve the fundamentally social problems of family separation, they have become integral to how these relationships are experienced and managed. Despite the transnational asymmetries in infrastructure and media literacy, the increasing availability of transnational communication is used as a justification for key decisions relating to migration or settlement in the host country. This discourse, which ultimately normalizes migration decisions, is also evident at an institutional level. The chapter brings together researchwith institutional actors as well as migrant families and shows that transnational communication through new media – understood as an environment of polymedia – has become implicated in making female migration more socially acceptable while ultimately influencing patterns of migration. By bringing together an analysis of interpersonal communication as mediation and social change as mediatization the chapter shows that media do not just add a new dimension to the phenomenon of migration – they transform it altogether. The chapter also outlines the distinct contribution of an ethnographic approach to mediatization.