Friends disconnected: How mobile work transforms friendships through absence and presence

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on friendship as a significant interpersonal relationship that has not prominently figured in geographic discussions of mobile work. Taking friendship as our object of analysis, we explore how wellbeing becomes compromised for mobile workers and their friends. Responding to concerns outlined by our research participants during semi-structured Skype interviews, we acknowledge mobile working practices transform friendships that exist outside sites of paid labour. To consider the complexity of these transformations, we address how spatial relations of proximity and distance demarcate physical and metaphorical issues of absence and presence. These issues can lead mobile workers to become reclusive and focused on self-directed activities. This oscillating absence and presence transforms friendships and highlights the relational interplay of mobility and immobility in mobile work.