Transnational families and media practices: methods, ethics and critical approaches

Transnational families, through their ability to cross borders, connect cultures, expand the meanings and limits of national belonging, and negotiate the cultural, linguistic and psychological challenges of migration, have become exemplary models of “mobile lives”. Transnational families offer insights into the contradictions and complexities of interculturality as a lived reality permeating more and less intimate interpersonal experiences. The centrality of transnational family communication in today’s world is enhanced by everyday digital media usage, the ubiquity of portable devices and the new technical affordances of platforms and apps. Transnational families therefore help us apprehend historical transformations connected to mediated experiences of crossing borders and interculturality.

Personal input

While the attention of scholars has intensified around how transnational families both shape and are shaped by the (urban) spaces they leave and enter, we contend that more attention needs to be paid to the methodological and ethical challenges researchers face when studying transnational families and communities. This conference provides an opportunity for scholars to discuss the assumptions underpinning their research and to share critical reflections on the ethical responsibilities that researchers have when observing transnational families and communities, including through digital platforms and their connection with mobility processes in and through cities.

We invite scholars and PhD researchers to submit abstract proposals that engage with new theoretical, methodological and ethical approaches to the study of transnational families and their communication practices in Europe and beyond. We also welcome submissions that can provide historical perspectives into the (dis)continuities characterizing transnational families and their media practices. Contributions that call into question Eurocentric forms of knowledge through decolonial narratives and frameworks are especially welcome.

Organisation

The ECREA conference "Transnational families and media practices: methods, ethics, and critical approaches" is hosted by the Media and Communication department of the ESHCC. The local organisation team consists of ESHCC staff members David Ongenaert, Isabel Awad Cherit, Amanda Paz Alencar and Jacco van Sterkenburg. They organised the conference together with ECREA's International and Intercultural Communication section, and Diaspora, Migration and the Media section. 

Please find more information here.