Organising, performing, and experiencing festive family rituals sustain relationships among family members. However, in recent times, high levels of human migration alongside the rapid development of digital communication technologies are reconfiguring family traditions. This paper investigates the ways in which 21 overseas Filipino workers in Melbourne, Australia, and their left-behind family members in the Philippines use mobile devices and communications platforms to restage festive family rituals. Employing a visual method and drawing on in-depth interviews, the empirical study uncovers the personalised and heterogenous practices of the transnational Filipino family in performing intimacy at a distance, paving the way for constructing copresence during festivities. Importantly, using the mobilities lens (Urry, 2007) as a framework for critical investigation, the findings show that a disproportionate level of network capital as informed by age, gender, and social class produces “asymmetrical mobile intimacy.” The present study also reveals how ambivalent feelings emerge due to technological asymmetries and parameters. Importantly, transnational families often negotiate such contradictory experiences through mobile device use. By comparing and contrasting the mobile practices of dispersed family members, the present study uncovers the hidden social inequalities perpetuated in a networked family life.

This article examines the ways in which 21 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Melbourne, Australia, and their left-behind family members in the Philippines use mobile media to re-stage, experience and negotiate home. Based on deploying in-depth interviews and visual methods, the findings show the reconstruction of a sense of dwelling through mobile devices. This transformation is shaped by the performance of ritualistic practices, gender roles and socioeconomic conditions. The study also uncovers how mediated mobilities are undermined by social structures and uneven technological infrastructures, paving the way for unstable, exclusionary and ambivalent experiences. Hence, members of the transnational Filipino family often negotiate such challenges by deploying various tactics to ensure that ties are maintained. By unravelling the differential and constrained mobile practices of the transnational Filipino family in forging a sense of at-homeness, the article attends to a critical conception of domesticity in the age of smartphones and mobile phone applications.

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How have care practices in the transnational household have been carried out using digital communication technologies? This chapter presents the multiple modes of caregiving used by transnational families—practical, emotional, and moral care—in digital environments. It also conceptualizes caregiving practices through ‘elastic carework’ whereby care receiving and transfer are ‘stretched’ to reach across vast distances, influenced by ‘filial piety’ as well as technological access and capacities. By locating the interconnected factors that define caregiving at a distance, the chapter explores how transnational family members experience and negotiate care benefits and burden. Ultimately, the chapter offers a nuanced take on care provision in a transnational, familial, and networked arrangement.