Mining mobile families: digital media, non-resident work and family relationships

• In Event: Caring across Borders: Materiality and Belonging in Transnational Families I

Abstract

The role of digital media in overcoming the burdens of distance has received much interest in migration scholarship (Fortunati et al., 2012, Gretschke, 2012, Madianou and Miller 2012). Yet, despite the obvious role digital media plays for transnational families, its significance in mediating the impact of non-resident work on family relationships, gendered family roles, expectations and obligations is currently unknown (Baldassar, 2016; Meredith, Rush & Robinson, 2014; Taylor & Simmonds, 2009). This paper brings together these areas of inquiry to explore how mobility and absence are common features of family life (Baldassar and Merla, 2014).

The paper draws on preliminary fieldwork conducted in the coal mining Bowen Basin region as part of a wider ethnographic study that interrogates the ways digital media impacts upon mobile labour and non-resident workers in the resource extraction industries comprised of FIFO (fly-in, fly-out) DIDO (drive-in, drive-out) and BIBO (bus-in, bus-out) workers in Queensland. The research combines conventional ethnography with non-resident workers in mining accommodation villages, on-site, and their families in source destinations. It also incorporates innovative methods including portable kit studies with workers to gauge routine material practices and the meanings attached to movement while the worker is away (Horst & Taylor, 2014; Ito et al. 2009). The paper contributes to the panel by critically discussing ideas of belonging through ‘doing family’ and creating a sense of ‘family-hood’ across time and distance through material and digital practices (Baldassar & Merla, 2014; Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002; Nedelcu & Wyss, 2016).

Author

• Jolynna Sinanan, University of Sydney