12. Dial “C” for Culture

Abstract

In recent decades, the transnational practices that tie migrants and immigrants to their families and friends “back home”—such as calling, visiting, and sending care packages and money—have become increasingly significant sources of profit for media and telecommunications corporations, airlines, shipping companies, and remittance centers.¹ Returns from the latter alone, for example, reached nearly fifteen billion dollars in 2007.² As more and more people from the Global South leave families to work abroad, what advertisers sometimes refer to as “cross-border” relationships have become more visible to corporate actors, who, in turn, search for ways to make their services and