Book Reviews • DOI: 10.2478/Njmr-2018-0025 NJMR • 8(3) • 2018 • 192-198
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Book Reviews • DOI: 10.2478/njmr-2018-0025 NJMR • 8(3) • 2018 • 192-198 BOOK REVIEWS Cuban, Sondra (2017) Transnational family communication: The book develops the idea of ICT-based interaction in immigrants and ICTs, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 298 pp. transnational families and expands previously published critical ideas about technological communication possibilities among immigrants. It is often discussed in migration studies that information and Cuban stresses that more than technologies, she is interested communication technologies (ICTs), such as Skype, international in psychological, sociohistorical, cultural and political contexts of call applications, social media platforms and other technological human communication through ICTs. As she puts it, her work asks developments, are improving the quality of life of mobile people the ‘who, what, when, where and why’ (p. 3) questions about long- (Foner & Dreby 2011: 556; Bacigalupe & Lambe 2011: 14). Sondra distance communication. The author is aiming at giving a wider Cuban challenges the idea of easily staying in touch and keeping picture and raising awareness regarding downfalls that accompany up close relations from the distance. In her book, she describes communication from a distance. The goal is met especially in Chapter how immigrant women – as part of transnational families – maintain 6, which opens the possibilities for care talk within transnational ‘familyhood’ across borders (Bryceson & Vuorela 2002: 3) and families. She shows how difficult it is to speak about death, illness stresses the hardships and difficulties of both mobile members of or depression using ICTs, and even more, how helpless it makes the families as well as those who stay behind. She argues that even the other side, because possibilities to give support are very limited. when we have different technologies to be able to stay in touch over Healthcare aspects of the book are very engaging and expose the the distance, the close ones are always in some way out of reach participants’ struggles to care for their family members. Perhaps the (p. 239). most important feature of the book is the development of different The author, Dr. Sondra Cuban from the Western Washington schemes of communication among immigrant women. Those University, is an educational sociologist with areas of interests in schemes are classified as follows: (1) the circle, which refers to a immigration and education. Since 2014, she has focussed on the decentralised communication system, where the network stays in nexus of economic justice and migrancy, with Washington State as touch and messages are circulated through different people; (2) the a case study that the book is also opening more specifically. She channel, which is defined as a live, synchronous communication way, has also researched under-represented communities, including e.g., a videoconference call; (3) the line configuration, which is a row immigrants and refugees transitioning out of homelessness. Her of steps and actions taken to get or receive help; and (4) the star most recent project focusses on the mobilities of immigrant women module, which is the most centralised one, with one operator who in Temuco, Chile. gathers and delivers news, support and care (pp. 45–47). It is also The author masterfully combines qualitative materials she interesting how these modules are later developed and combined has gathered while working with immigrant women in Washington with the rescue chain idea that centres on delivering just-in-time State, USA. The research rests on remarkable empirical material, support or with the emotional chain in the context of caring for including auto-ethnography, in-depth interviews with 60 informants, somebody from a distance. shadowing and observation notes as well as long-scale fieldwork that The most crucial keyword of the book is ‘affordance’, which is enables the author to draw detailed in-depth pictures of the lives of defined as ‘the resources, capacities, access and tools that enable her informants. Cuban has developed a valuable methodological tool, the interactions to take place’ (p. 3). The author also dedicates two which she calls ‘visuality, voice and vibe’ (p. 78). The research started chapters to describe different affordances among immigrant women with observing; the author stresses the importance of seeing faces and stresses that her sample shows that the drastic difference is and reactions through a camera lens, incorporating social context to visible among different social classes. Transnational communication transnational communication. She refers to voices as hearing, as well within their networks was affected by their education and family- as deep listening, for describing how family members talk about their created opportunities (p. 213). The low-skilled group was very visible experiences. But the most valued part is the vibe approach, which by their weak digital literacy skills, due to the lack of both infrastructure refers to the affective and somatic aspects of sensing family members’ (no Internet connection in rural areas) and access to technologies meanings (pp. 78–79). These tools are very relevant to be able to grasp such as smartphones and computers. The only possible way to be the understanding of family communication, where a lot is said without able to stay in touch with their families was using domestic landlines words. For example, as Cuban explains, a participant when ‘talking and mobile phones with and without cards. to her mother, may sense that while she smiles and says she is fine, The book draws a picture of the current apparently digitalising something else is happening beneath the surface’ (p. 79). Her work is world, where there are many groups that lack the same technological a nice example of how transnational studies need more multisensory possibilities that are available to others. In these cases, approaches and how much the field could gain from these. communication with one’s family can be too expensive to be able to 192 afford consistent contact, lacking privacy due to housing conditions based on interviews conducted mainly with the Afghans, but also or constant presence of other people, or impossible because of the with policy-makers, workers of non-governmental organisations insufficient quality of connection. The book reminds all the troubling (NGO) and officials in different sites in Greece, Istanbul, Brussels aspects of staying in touch over a distance and emphasises how and Berlin. Based on the narratives of the Afghans on the move, the premature it is to celebrate the era of the ICT. author depicts their displacement and search for a country to settle One of the central topics of the book is gender and how gender and to belong. Without a discussion on how the receiving and transit frames the communication between female immigrants (p. 213). Even countries constantly recast their policies to respond to new flows, though the subject itself is much gendered and all the informants the story would be half-told. Therefore, the author elaborates on the are women working in the traditionally female labour market, the impact of migration policies, particularly of the transit countries, on gendered aspect of the communication patterns did not arise that Afghans’ mobility as well as their periods of waiting, attainment or clearly from the book. It is taken too self-evidently that women are lack of status, access to international protection, subaltern integration the ones staying in touch with (female) family members and friends to countries of temporary settlement as well as detention or voluntary at the same time as men tend to talk less and on other matters. It is and forceful return. quite obvious that gender matters, but it is more difficult to get the The book is well-structured, guiding the reader to follow the answer as to why and how it matters. Mothers, sisters and daughters Afghans as they cross borders. The introductory chapter provides are visible in the book, but it raises the question why men are not so very interesting insights into transit migration. It shows that the present, and why are they left or falling out? destination and the route are not preset; they very much depend on The book is a relevant addition to ICT communication research the networks formed and the information accessed throughout the and gives a marvellous insight into transnational familyhood. The journey. Transit migration entails both mobility and immobility and book reminds us that the possibilities to communicate are not is a condition not solely defined by the state policies, but also by equal for everyone in all situations. Communication can be very the preferences, hopes and survival strategies of the migrants. The hierarchical, and the possibility to stay in touch may be a luxury for word transit reveals the migrants’ determination to continue their more vulnerable groups, even in our technological world. It is very journeys despite all the impediments. The author defines the Afghans easy to develop an illusory picture of easiness to communicate as transit migrants, whose irregularity starts with the decision to across the borders, but Sondra Cuban’s book brings in a carefully migrate. By not launching asylum applications in Turkey or Greece, developed picture, also including the struggles related to long- the Afghans ‘choose’ irregularity to move on to ‘Europe’ based on distance communication. The book is recommended reading for the information obtained from the smugglers, the Afghan diaspora, mobility as well as communication researchers, but it could also be social media as well as the journalists, researchers and NGO staff of interest for a much wider audience because it offers interesting working in the field. insights into contemporary behaviour patterns. The question of categories constitutes an important theme in the Keiu Telve* book. Categorisations have practical implications for one’s access PhD student, Department of Ethnology, University of Tartu, Estonia to a clear status, rights and services in the receiving countries. The departure of Afghans from Afghanistan started in the 1970s as a References refugee movement.