ICT-Mediated Familial Care in Turbulent Times: Filipinos' Subjectivities, Virtual Intimacy, and Resilience Amid Social Change

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started and intensified over two years ago, constant lockdowns and social distancing measures have left many people feeling disconnected and disoriented. To recapture and sustain a semblance of normalcy and connected co-existence, online platforms, and various communication media have become indispensable. However, this mode of social connectedness while being physically separated is nothing new to Filipino transnational families who have persevered and kept their familial bonds alive and well across time and space.

Based on findings from an ongoing ethnographic study that started in 2016, in this chapter, the author engages with critical issues regarding how communication technologies shape the exchange of familial care and intimacy within contexts of geographical dispersion. Through a discussion of the ways in which new forms of communication reconstruct the temporal and spatial aspects of Filipino transnational family life, the author explains how families preserve and nurture their collective commitments to the maintenance of kinship by using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to (re)enact and (re)create mundane existences but also to recognize, celebrate, and display significant milestones along the family life course. One of the key questions raised is how effective technology-mediated exchanges are in substituting for physical co-presence, which is widely accepted as the foundation of strong and healthy family relationships. By interrogating these issues, the author builds on a valuable body of research which theorizes how ICTs facilitate new forms of intimacy and virtual togetherness; but also contentious relations and emotional burdens that test the Filipino family’s resilience in turbulent times.

This chapter is a potent elaboration of how Filipino transnational family members adopt creative strategies to integrate their fragmented existences and (re)embed themselves into each other’s temporalities and subjectivities.

Citation

McCallum, D.G. (2023), "ICT-Mediated Familial Care in Turbulent Times: Filipinos' Subjectivities, Virtual Intimacy, and Resilience Amid Social Change", Gregorio, V.L., Batan, C.M. and Blair, S.L. (Ed.) Resilience and Familism: The Dynamic Nature of Families in the Philippines (Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research, Vol. 23), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-101. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1530-353520230000023006