Multiple dimensions of mediatised translocal social practices. A case study of domestic migrants in Bangladesh

Abstract

In the past decades, migration and translocal forms of living, including the spatial separation of households and families, have become everyday reality for almost a billion people. At the same time, mobile information and communication technologies, and especially mobile phones, have spread rapidly and are now accessible for many, even in poorer contexts in the Global South. The article combines practice-theory with approaches from media studies to examine how these two large themes intersect. It shows how the adoption of mobile phones by rural-to-urban labour migrants in Bangladesh is changing their translocal social practices, discusses key reasons for these changes, and their implications for translocal livelihoods and lives.