Left-Behind Children as Agents: Mobile Media, Transnational Communication and the Mediated Family Gaze

Abstract

Based on 38 in-depth interviews of left-behind children from Fuqing, a major illicit migrant-sending area in China, this chapter investigates how these children perceive the use of mobile media during transnational communications with their migrant parents. Additionally, it interrogates the ways in which these children employ mobile media to negotiate intergenerational relationships. I develop an argument about the ‘mediated family gaze’ to describe the familial power dynamics and emotional circulation in a techno-mediated context. The emergence of the ‘mediated family gaze’ in transnational family life has minimized the geographical and temporal constraints that divide these dispersed family members. That said, it has, also triggered some children’s protestations since it has justified some migrants’ prolonged absence. This study highlights the varied forms of agency enacted by left-behind children through the deployment of ‘mediated family gaze’ of changing their care deficit situation but also of fulfilling their filial duty. Compared with other versions of the gaze, characterized by the ‘power asymmetry’ between ‘the gaze’ and the ‘gazed-upon’, I argue that ‘mediated family gaze’ is more reciprocal and subject to negotiation as a consequence of the unconfined translocal familial settings along with the affordances of mobile media. Given the emergence of diversified family arrangements in contemporary mobile societies, the relevance of ‘mediated family gaze’ goes beyond transnational settings.