Empowering Interactions, Sustaining Ties: Vietnamese Migrant Students’ Communication with Left-Behind Families and Friends

Abstract

As globalisation continues unabated, migration in general and student migration in particular have intensified worldwide. Mobile communication technologies are important links between migrant students and their left-behind family and friends. This chapter seeks to highlight the complex relationships between the students’ migrant status and their technology use, as well as between technology and the family in Vietnamese transnational households. This chapter presents contextualised accounts of three Vietnamese migrant students’ media use over a two-week period, drawing data from a one-week media monitoring exercise, a one-week media deprivation exercise, semi-structured interviews and daily media diaries. The study found that the Vietnamese migrant students appropriated a variety of communication technologies to connect with their home country, which helped to energise family interactions, sustain family ties and facilitate parental and sibling mediation, thereby supporting bonding within Vietnamese transnational families. Moreover, the technologies also helped the students to build social capital with their left-behind friends in Vietnam.