The transnationalisation of intimacy: family relations and changes in an age of global mobility and digital media

In this chapter, we develop the ‘transnationalisation of intimacy’ as a conceptual lens to investigate the performance, embodiment and negotiation of transnational familial intimacy in a globalising and digital society. This is achieved by conducting a state-of-the-art review of theories and empirical studies on family relations and practices at the intersection of structural and technological forces in a transnational context. We first show that intimate family practices are engendered and undermined by mobility regimes and infrastructures. We then illuminate how communicative practices pave the way for transnational linkages but in an unequal manner, especially when material and symbolic forces are embedded in an unequal terrain. Finally, we consider the implications of transnationalism for (de)normalising family relations and practices, in creating distinctive, new transnational forms of familial intimacy. This chapter draws attention to the mutually constitutive nature of transnationalism and changing family relations and practices in a global and digital age.