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Paper short abstract:

Based on a long-term ethnographic study among transnational families in Tokyo, this paper addresses the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital family practices, displays and performances and the (re)doing of (digital) transnational family life in times of restricted mobilities.

Paper long abstract:

Research on transnational, multi-local or dispersed families has revealed the importance of Information and Communication Technologies for ‘doing family’: Digital family practices are crucial for maintaining familial ties and a sense of belonging across distance and despite mobility. Based on an on-going, long-term ethnographic study among transnational families in Tokyo and relying on a variety of qualitative methods like informal group discussions, daily encounters, participant observations and autoethnographic accounts, the paper asks: How have the pandemic and pandemic related policies like (inter)national travel restrictions impacted (digital) family practices – including displays and performances – of highly mobile, transnational families? First finding reveal that transnational families can build on already established digital family practices and therefore can cope rather well with the overall situation. Nevertheless, the pandemic and concomitant policies have forced these families to re-negotiate, re-evaluate and re-organise their transnational (digital) family life in specific ways; in particular with regard to further developing their digital family practices and with regard to digital displays and performances for different (global) audiences. Further, the on-going pandemic not only shows the deficiencies of current technologies and a (completely) digital family life but also highlights (global) inequalities: privileges of economically well-off, elite transnational families are clearly being (re)produced.