Paper short abstract:

This paper explores disruptions in communication between some Eritrean refugees in Italy and their kin back home to highlight contradictory implications of widespread technologies for interpersonal transnational relationships.

Paper long abstract:

Migration studies have recently showed that technology plays a crucial role in facilitating the circulation of information and images, which are not only practically useful in the organisation of migration journeys, but are also reinforcing the desire of migration itself (e.g. Panagakos&Horst, 2006). Whereas most studies focus on the impact of information and images transmitted through technology, less attention has been paid to the social circumstances which obstruct these flows, with few exceptions (Lindley, 2010; Tazanu, 2015). Based on a multi-sited ethnography in Italy and Eritrea, this paper first describes the role of ICT technologies and mobile phone communication in migration from Eritrea. Then it shows that, in spite of technological possibilities to communicate, contacts between Eritrean refugees in Italy and their families back home are often extremely limited. This is not the result of infrastructural underdevelopment, but the consequence of a bundle of social and family expectations perceived by my informants as overwhelming. While revisiting the literature on the moral economy of transnational families (Parry&Bloch, 1989; Baldassar&Merla, 2014) and recent works on refugees and technologies (Leung, 2009; Tazanu, 2015), my study aims to highlight the contradictory implications of new technologies for the interpersonal relationships between refugees and their kin back home.