Transnationalism and care circulation: Mobility, caregiving, and the technologies that shape them

Our lives are increasingly transnational as our family, friendship, community and work relations often include a mix of people who are geographically ‘local’ and geographically ‘distant’. As a result, we must engage in the difficult task of maintaining meaningful relationships across distance, including meeting the obligations that characterize kinship and friendship, which feature the reciprocal exchange of care. This chapter examines the role of care in sustaining transnational lives, and the conceptual and methodological challenges in researching the relationship between mobility and caregiving, and the technologies that shape them. It explores these challenges by examining who cares, when, how and why. Gender and culture, and the way they impact on access to the time and technologies of caregiving are identified as critical, as is the need to challenge our deeply held normative understanding of caregiving as synonymous with physical co-presence through concepts like care circulation and digital kinning.