Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“I Wish I Was A Bird To Fly Back And Forth:” Immigrant Women And Their Transnational Families Caring At A Distance: Draft 4/14/15, Sondra Cuban

Adult & Higher Education

This case study of fifty women immigrants in Washington state focuses on the ingenious emotional strategies they engaged in with their left-behind families to care at a distance and the problematic ways the information and communication technology (ICTs) mediated these relationships across space and time. The study draws on a feminist transnational framework and an extended case method approach to understand the emotional dimensions and meanings of care by separated members and the ways the social technologies, and other factors, shaped these transnational spaces and interactions. The study utilizes ethnographic methods (interviews, informants, journals, focus groups, documentary analysis, and informal …