XIX Congreso Internacional de Tecnolog?a, Conocimiento y Sociedad

Abstract

Global processes of human migration and mobility are increasingly intertwined with the rapid innovations in digital networked technologies. The always-on connectivity embedded in the emerging communication platforms such as social media creates both opportunities and constraints that underline migrants’ everyday life. Drawing from an ethnographic study of Chinese international students’ everyday practices of social media in Australia, this paper focuses on the digital ‘disconnective practices’ (Light 2014) in the context of cross-border relations with parents and other family members. It highlights the nuances of Chinese students’ practices of disconnection with social media, WeChat specifically, by identifying and analysing two interlinked forms of (dis)connection that arise out of their everyday negotiation of transnational family relations. The first is to disconnect with the public by creating intimate spaces on WeChat that are exclusive to the family members. On the contrary, the other form is to detach themselves from such intimate spaces, often temporarily, to escape and resist the familial control and surveillance. Traversing the border between the public and the intimate and that between connection and disconnection, Chinese students tactically maintain and negotiate their relations with the family on social media platforms. Despite such plausible flexibility, however, a complete disengagement from the family is hardly an option in the case of Chinese international students. Through the lens of disconnection, this paper brings to light Chinese international students’ entanglements with their families afar and how they are related to the wider social and cultural forces.