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Week 9: Transnational digital networks – families

and religion
Umut Erel and John Maiden

1 Introduction
This week you will be considering a transnational perspective on families and religion. One main
study activity will be to read Chapter 5, ‘Transnational digital networks: families and religion’, in the
module textbook. You will explore the concept of transnationalism in the context of how migrant
family members care for each other at a distance, using digital technologies. These digital
technologies offer many advantages for transnational families to keep emotionally close, share their
everyday experiences with each other and also provide each other with financial support. You will
see how sociologists use the concepts of ‘co-presence’, ‘ambient co-presence’ and always-on
lifestyles to make sense of the ways in which transnational families connect. You will also explore
some of the challenges of digital technologies, which may amplify some conflicts among migrant
family members in ways that were not commonly experienced with previous technologies such as
letter writing.

You will also gain knowledge of how the concept of transnationalism can help us understand
religious networks that transcend national boundaries. In doing so, you will explore the concept of
religious social capital. Religious organisations, often utilising digital technologies, can help migrants
to move to a new country, settle and integrate in the new country, and also sustain their connections
with communities in their countries of origin as well as other places. You will explore the growth of
Pentecostal religious groups transnationally, to understand how Christianity, which in the 19th
century, in particular, moved from Europe and North America to other places in the world through
mission and imperialism, has now got centres of religious authority in places such as Nigeria and
Brazil. From these locations in the Global South, migration and mission now bring ‘reverse’ flows of
Christianity to the Global North.

Although this block mentions all module threads, its focus is the module thread of power and
inequality.

Please note, this week’s work addresses issues, including family separation, that some people may
find distressing. If you feel anxious or angry at the thought of certain topics, we recommend
downloading the guidance on Studying emotive topics from the Resources section of the DD218
module website, and speaking to your tutor to ensure they are able to support you.

1.1 This week you will:

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 read Chapter 5, ‘Transnational digital networks: families and religion’ by Umut Erel and John
Maiden, in the module textbook
reflect on how you use digital media to stay in touch with friends and family

watch a video about digital technologies during the Covid-19 lockdown

listen to an audio about migrant families’ use of digital media

watch a video about migrant families

watch a screencast about religion and transnational networks

undertake activities to deepen your understanding of transnational digital networks.

2 Power, inequality and transnational connections

Figure 9.1 Transnational networks nowadays connect different places on the globe.

Block 2 will concentrate on the module thread of power and inequality, even though other module
threads will also be mentioned. Throughout the week, you will analyse how these ways in which
society and technology interact (Figure 9.1) are closely tied to the module threads of individuals and
society and power and inequality. You will learn how migration can be seen as the action of an
individual trying to make a living, while also it is shaped by larger societal inequalities, where
individual workers in the Global South are unable to earn enough to support their families.
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Although wages in the Global North allow migrant workers to support their families, often they are
subject to immigration regulations, which do not permit them to bring their children or family
members with them. Even if their income is helpful in supporting their families in their original
countries, they might not be able to afford to bring their children to the country in which they live and
work and pay for childcare, housing and other living costs. This means that many migrant workers
miss out on the opportunity to provide care for their children in a hands-on way.

Digital technologies allow migrant workers to connect closely with their children and other family
members back home. However, there are also inequalities of access to these technologies. For
example, the Philippines is a country where families rely heavily on migrant workers sending money
to them. Yet, many families in rural areas do not have access to fast internet or reliable telephone
lines, and outgoing phone calls are expensive. In this way, inequalities of income, and of
immigration rights between countries of the Global South and North, as well as inequalities in
access to digital technologies, shape how transnational families connect.

You will see how religious organisations can have an important role connecting migrants (and
people of second, third etc. generation migrant families) to transnational spiritual ‘societies’, while
also enabling migrants to negotiate new societies in the Global North. You will also explore the
relationship between transnational religious groups and the generation of social capital – to what
extent might these networks empower individuals? Before you consider the meaning of
transnational connections, you begin this week by reflecting on your own experiences of using
digital technologies to stay in touch with family and friends. This is useful as reflecting on our own
personal experiences is a good way to develop the sociological imagination: it can help to draw
connections between personal experiences and social processes.

3 Digital technologies for connecting families

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Figure 9.2 Mother and daughter connecting with distant family members.

You might begin by thinking of your own use of digital technology to stay in touch with family
members when you are physically separated from them (Figure 9.2). For example, you or a family
member might be on holiday or travelling for work. Do you call them, text them or have video chats
with them? What kind of things do you consider when you contact them, such as how your video
call may fit in or interfere with their daily routines?

As one of the authors, Umut, reflects about travel and connecting with family: When I travel for
work, I try to video call my five-year-old in the evenings, to say goodnight, show her my hotel room
so she has an idea where I am staying and what I am doing, and ask about her day. However, in the
mornings I tend to send a text message, so as not to interrupt her routine of getting ready for
school. How do the different formats of making contact with your family members make you feel?
You might feel happy and reassured to see and hear them, but you might also feel more strongly
how much you miss them. It is useful to reflect on how you use technology to stay in touch with
family and friends, as reflection on our own experiences can help us to better understand the
advantages and challenges of digital technologies. Digital technologies allow us not only to
exchange information, but also to build and maintain a close relationship with family members. In
the next activity, you will consider in more detail the role that time and space play in connecting with
family and friends across a distance. Considerations of time and space make a difference to how
easily we can make these connections.
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3.1 Reflecting on time, space and feeling connected
The next activity invites you to reflect on how time and space make a difference to the way you
connect to family and friends. By reflecting on your own experiences, you can practise your
sociological imagination. This can help to understand how your experiences are part of wider ‘public
issues’. This is an example of the connection that C.Wright Mills (2000) identified between ‘private
troubles’ and ‘public issues’, which you have learned about in Block 1.

Activity 9.1 Staying in contact

You should allow about 15 minutes for this activity.

Take a few minutes to jot down how the different ways of making contact with your friends and
family when you are away from them affect you in terms of:

planning your time and movements (do you have to be at a particular place, e.g. with
Wi-Fi or computer access at a specific time?)

do you feel emotionally connected to them, or does the technology make you feel
emotionally distant?

do you feel responsible for showing them that you care about them?
do you feel disappointed if they do not have time to talk to you?

Save and reveal discussion Reset

Many of us have experienced a short separation from family and friends, whether it is a holiday or a
trip for work. So you can learn something of the challenges of connecting with distant loved ones
online by reflecting on this experience. However, there are also important differences to migrant
workers’ experiences. The most important difference is perhaps that they are challenged to maintain
family relationships over long-term separations.

3.2 Families connecting across time and distance

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Figure 9.3 Finding the right time to connect.

Although you can learn something about wider social processes by reflecting on your own personal
experiences, it is also important to consider how your personal experiences may be different from
those of others in society. This can help to identify which factors can affect these social processes –
it is important for sociologists not to generalise from the experiences of one group of people to
others.

Activity 9.2 Reflecting on short-term and long-term family separations

You should allow about 20 minutes for this activity.

Can you think about similarities and differences for family members who are separated from
each other for a long period because of migration or short term for a holiday or work trip? Jot
down two or three points that you think might be similar or different.
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 Save and reveal discussion Reset

How did you get on with Activities 9.1 and 9.2? Your experiences and thoughts might have been
quite different from ours, but the main purpose of these activities is to get you to think about the
different opportunities and challenges involved in connecting with family and friends through digital
technologies, and how this affects migrant families.

Migrant families have to make a conscious effort to maintain a sense of closeness over the long-
term separations they experience – this is a difference to short-term separations experienced during
holiday or work trips. Migrant families find many creative ways to do so. For example, many families
and couples create a regular time when they share dinner, or even cook together, and chat over
their food via webcams. Baldassar (2016) reports on a family whose members in Italy and Australia
meet on a weekly basis, eating together, sharing opinions on the football, and giving each other
their news. During these Sunday lunches, the two teenage cousins, one in Australia and the other in
Italy, who would perhaps not had many opportunities to interact, have come to know each other and
now chat or text to each other even outside of these family occasions.

Although many migrant family members appreciate the opportunity to get in touch with each other,
the ‘always-on’ lifestyle, that is the lifestyle of always being available to communicate on social
media, can also feel burdensome. It requires an investment of time, which migrants might perhaps
prefer to use to socialise with their work colleagues or friends in their new place.

So, in this reflection, you have found that digital technologies can help to bridge distances of space
and enable family members to feel a sense of shared experience at the same time. It is also clear
that building and maintaining these relationships over the long term requires effort and an
investment of time.

3.3 Digital technology during the Covid-19 lockdown

Although migrant families use digital technologies to bridge long distances of space, many of us
have experienced that digital technologies can be important to maintain closeness when we are
kept away from friends and family, even though they may live only a short distance away. In 2020, at
the time of writing this module, the UK experienced a lockdown during the Covid-19 outbreak.
People were not allowed to go out and were forced to live under lockdown. At that time, many
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people started to use social media more frequently to stay in touch with their families as they could
not see them in person while complying with the lockdown regulations. Do you remember whether
you changed your use of social media at that time? If so, in what ways?

Figure 9.4 Business and public places closed during lockdown.

Activity 9.3 How did you stay in touch with family and friends

You should allow about 40 minutes for this activity.

Watch Video 9.1, an interview between Sophie Watson and Umut Erel where they discuss
Sophie Watson’s experience of social media. While you are watching this interview, take a few
notes on how Sophie changed her use of digital technologies. Also think about how Sophie
thinks this changed her feeling of time and space.
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 Save and reveal discussion Reset

3.4 Reading about transnational digital networks

Now you have reflected on different ways of using digital technologies to connect with family and
friends, read Chapter 5, ‘Transnational digital networks: families and religion’ by Umut Erel and John
Maiden, in the module textbook and then return here to complete the rest of the week. This chapter
explores in-depth how digital technologies help to shape transnational connections.

After completing this week’s online material, return to the chapter to see if you might need to make
additional notes, for example, in your e-portfolio.

4 How do transnational families use digital technologies to

stay in touch?
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Figure 9.5 Young woman looking at mobile phone.

Now you have finished reading Chapter 5, we will use the rest of the week to explore further some
of the issues arising from the chapter in which you have already met Mirca Madianou.

4.1 Transnational Filippino families’ use of digital

technologies
Mirca Madianou (Figure 9.6), a scholar of Media and Communication, has undertaken research
about transnational families’ uses of digital technologies since 2007. In Activity 9.4, you will listen to
the interview to learn more about her research, where she explains how transnational Filipino
families have used digital technologies to overcome the challenge of maintaining a sense of family
across distance.

Activity 9.4 Using digital technologies to stay in touch

You should allow about 1 hour 20 minutes for this activity.

Listen to Audio 9.1, an interview with Mirca Madianou, and then answer the questions that
follow. You might need to listen to the interview more than once.
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 Figure 9.6 Mirca Madianou.

Question 1 Consider the difference digital technologies have made to the frequency with
which migrants can now communicate with their family members in the Philippines and
answer the following questions.

a) The arrival of digital technologies has made a big difference to how frequently migrants can
communicate with their family members. True or false?

True

False

Check your answer Reveal answer

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 b) Before the arrival of digital technologies, migrants might have sent a monthly letter, which
took a long time to reach the addressee. By that time the news contained in the letter was
already (choose one):

Important

Old

A guess

Check your answer Reveal answer

c) Before the arrival of digital technologies, migrants were only able to call once a week for a
short call of five minutes to hear their family members’ voices. The reason that they were only
able to call once a week for a short time is that (choose one):

Long distance phone calls were very expensive

They didn’t have time to talk longer

They were not used to talking on the phone

Check your answer Reveal answer

d) Nowadays with the wide availability of digital technologies, families communicate much
more frequently and are able to have longer contact. Many families communicate on a daily
basis. They might use the following means of communication (tick all that apply):

Text messages

Digital telephony

Web cameras

Check your answer Reveal answer

Question 2 Mirca Madianou explains in the audio how digital technology has helped migrant
women provide hands-on care for their children from a distance. Using the drop-down options,
fill in the correct words to complete the following sentences.
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 Migrant women feel they can be much more involved in providing care for their children at a
distance through digital technologies. They can check on how the family spends

Select... . They can also be involved in what their children

Select... , by planning the weekly shopping and menus. Mothers can also help their

children with their Select... .

This means that digital technologies have allowed migrant women a much more active

involvement in mothering. This often takes up a Select... .

Save Check your answer Reveal answer Reset

Question 3 What are the different ways migrant mothers use to communicate with their
children in the Philippines? Using the drop-down options, fill in the correct words to complete
the following sentences.
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 Mothers of young children prefer to use webcams than, for example, a voice call

Select... .

Seeing their mothers on a regular basis on webcams also allows children to maintain a long-

term connection with their mothers,

Select... . In the past, it was common for

migrant mothers to return after years of absence, only to find that their young children did not

recognise them, which was a painful experience for the mothers. Seeing their children on

webcams also reassures mothers that the children are well, that their development is healthy

and Select... in the Philippines. With older children,

mothers often use instant messaging, for example to help with their homework. Many
mothers of older children are also keen to find out about their children’s everyday lives

through following their posts on social media. They learn about their children’s

Select... about their

children’s everyday lives. This helps them connect with their older children.

Save Check your answer Reveal answer Reset

Question 4 In the interview, Mirca Madianou emphasises that it is important to also look at
how children feel about communicating with their migrant mothers. Think about the different
attitudes of children towards communicating with their migrant mothers through digital
technologies and answer the following questions.
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 a) In her research, Mirca Madianou found that children’s attitudes towards digital technologies
are (tick one):

Ambivalent

Positive

Negative

Check your answer Reveal answer

b) Children felt reassured because social media sites and mobile phones allowed them to be
in contact with their migrant mothers on a regular basis, and for long conversations. True or
false?

True

False

Check your answer Reveal answer

c) Mirca Madianou argues that digital technologies are not the only factor influencing whether
migrant mothers and children had a good or difficult relationship. Which other factors had an
influence on the relationship between migrant mothers and their children (tick all that apply):

The age of the child when the mother left home

The quality of the relationship before the mother left

Whether the children are happy with the current care arrangements

Check your answer Reveal answer

Question 5 In Mirca Madianou’s research, she found that migrant mothers also identified
aspects of digital technologies as negative. What is the reason for this (tick one)?

Migrant mothers find the ability to connect with their children difficult

Migrant mothers resent that digital media allow kin members to contact them quickly and
easily to ask for financial help

Migrant mothers resent that they can help their children with homework
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 Check your answer Reveal answer

5 Searching for an article using a reference

Figure 9.7 Searching the library for an online article.

In the previous section, you engaged with Mirca Madianou’s audio interview about her research with
transnational Filipino families. This was a good opportunity to hear directly from a researcher about
how they find out about the relationship between digital technologies and society. Although such
audios are of course really interesting, in the social sciences it is more usual to read a journal article
if you want to find out about the most recent research on a topic. In this next activity, you will explore
how to find a journal article if you have a reference. For example, if you would like to find out in
more detail about a particular piece of research that has been cited in the textbook, you will be able
to find an article on the Open University (OU) Library pages and read it as part of your independent
study.

The activities in this section will show you how to find an academic journal article using the OU
Library’s online journal collection. You do not need to read the full article for the activities, but you
may find it interesting to glance through it, if only to see what academic journal articles look like.

After working through this section, you should be able to:

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 understand why you should use journal articles

understand the importance of the key components of a reference

find a journal article from a reference using the OU Library website.

5.1 Why journal articles?

Back issues of journals allow us to track the development of debates over time. For example, we
can go back and read ‘classic’ articles – ones that introduced a major new idea or turning point in a
particular field of inquiry. Equally, we can follow the progress of debate on a given topic as different
researchers describe new findings or offer arguments for and against a particular position.

A journal is published regularly and contains scholarly articles written by academics, researchers or
experts on a topic. Articles are often reviewed by other experts in the same field before publication.
This peer review makes them highly authoritative. As journal articles are published regularly, they
are a good source for the most recent research or information on a topic.

5.2 Components of a reference

A reference does two important things:

it acknowledges the work of another author

it provides the information you need to find the original work.

References are compiled using specific referencing styles. The following table shows you how a
reference to a journal article is put together in the Cite Them Right Harvard style. In Week 10, you
will learn more about referencing styles, in particular Cite Them Right Harvard, which is the
referencing style the Open University uses for most undergraduate modules. You may come across
references written in other styles, but they all include the same details.

The full reference for the article is: Casanova, J. (2001) ‘Religion, the new millennium and
globalization’, Sociology of Religion, 62(4), pp. 415–441. doi:10.2307/3712434.

Table 9.1 shows how the reference is broken down into different components.

Table 9.1 Components of a reference

Generic reference component Example reference

Author Casanova, J.
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 (Year of publication) (2001)

‘Article title’ ‘Religion, the new millennium and globalization’

Journal title Sociology of Religion

Volume number 62

(Issue number) (4)

Page range pp. 415–441

Digital Object Identifier (doi) 10.2307/3712434

Table 9.1 highlights the component parts of a reference to a journal article. The first parts of the
reference that you usually need are the journal title followed by the year of publication.

5.3 Finding online journal articles

If you are looking for a specific online journal article, a good place to start is Library Search by using
the reference details.

If you’ve never used references to find articles before, it can be difficult to know which piece of
information would be most helpful to use in a search engine. The following activity will encourage
you to consider a few of the options.

Activity 9.5 Using Library Search

You should allow about 20 minutes for this activity.

Question 1 Three types of information that make a reference are listed here. Which of these
do you think would generate the fewest results using Library Search (tick one):

Author(s)

Article title

Journal title

Check your answer Reveal answer

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 You will now conduct some searches of your own. This will give you the opportunity to
compare different types of searches, and to discover search strategies that will help you in the
future.

Question 2 Open Library Search to start. You may want to open Library Search in a new
window so you can refer back to this activity.

Consider this reference, which is for an online journal article:

Casanova, J. (2001) ‘Religion, the new millennium and globalization’, Sociology of Religion,
62(4), pp. 415–441. doi:10.2307/3712434.

Use Library Search to find the original article, by searching for the title of the article, then
answer the following questions:

How many results were generated?

Did the article appear at or near the top of the search results?
Were you able to open the full text of the article?

Once you have done this, try searching for the article using the journal title, then use the year,
or the volume and the issue number, and page numbers to find the article.

Was this as easy or more difficult as the first search by article title?
Did it take you longer to find the article by searching for the journal title and then
navigating to the correct volume, issue number and page number?

Use the following box to make a note of your findings, then save your work and read the
discussions that follows.

Save and reveal discussion Reset

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References for online journal articles provide you with the information you need to find the original
article. The information you choose to use as your search criteria will determine how successful
your search is.

You should now be able to:

identify the parts that make up a reference to an online journal article

use the information provided within the reference to conduct successful searches for original
articles.

use the same search strategies for other types of materials, such as books, websites and
newspaper articles.

You can find out more about searching for articles on the OU Library page ‘Finding ejournals and
articles’.

5.4 Finding and reading an extract from an academic journal

article
Activity 9.5 showed you how to search for and find an article in an academic journal. In Activity 9.6,
you will practise this skill and then read a short extract from an academic article. Academic articles
are mainly written for other academics, that is why students may find that they can be quite difficult
to read. So, don’t worry if you find some aspects of this task challenging. Finding and retrieving
information is an important skill, but it does not mean that you have to fully understand every single
sentence in the article. The chosen extract explains how migrant families used old technologies for
staying in touch, such as letter writing or telephone calls, a topic that you have already heard about
to some extent in the audio interview with Mirca Madianou.

In the following activity, Raelene Wilding (2006) is reporting on a piece of research with migrants in
Australia. This research article reports on an early study on how transnational families use
communication technologies to create and maintain a sense of connection. It helpfully contrasts
older technologies, such as letter writing (which were slow) and telephone conversations (which
were expensive) with newer, digital technologies. The activity will help you to practise the skills of
searching for an article and develops your skills of extracting information.
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Figure 9.8 Migrants used to stay in touch with family members through letter writing.

Activity 9.6 ‘Old’ technologies for keeping in touch

You should allow about 45 minutes for this activity.

Go to Library Search and find the following article:

Wilding, R. (2006) ‘“Virtual” intimacies? Families communicating across transnational

contexts’, Global Networks, 6(2), pp. 125–142.

Look at the section ‘Communicating in transnational domains’, pp. 129–131, and think about
how migrant families used to communicate before the availability of digital technologies. Using
the drop-down options, fill in the correct words to complete the following sentences.
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 In the study of migrants in Australia, the researchers found that up until the mid-1990s, most
people preferred to communicate via ….. Select... , as the telephone was seen as

too expensive to use on a regular basis. Select... were reserved for special

occasions such as birthdays or holidays, and calls tended to be short. When the cost of

phone calls dropped in the mid-1990s, families tended to have Select... phone calls

which usually lasted about half an hour and gave families the opportunity to ‘just chat’

(Wilding, 2006, p. 130).

Save Check your answer Reveal answer Reset

How did you find this activity? Were you able to find the journal article easily or did you need to use
different strategies for finding the article? Don’t worry if it took a little while to find and access the
article. Searching for journal articles is a skill that takes some practice.

When you read the extract, what did you think of the language Wilding used? Was it challenging to
understand or did you find it more straightforward than you expected? Research articles follow
particular rules and conventions for presenting their findings, such as including quotes from
research participants. These may be quite different from the texts that you are used to reading. As
an undergraduate student, you are not expected to read and understand every sentence and
argument in Wilding’s article, but hopefully it is interesting for you to see how research findings are
presented in social science academic journals.

Although you have explored migrants’ uses of ‘old’ technologies to stay in touch with family
members, in the next section, you will focus on what digital technologies offer to migrants.

6 How digital technologies enable migrant workers’

presentation of self
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In Chapter 5, you learned that many of the women who migrate to the Global North to work in
domestic settings are care workers. Their jobs range from domestic work to childcare and care for
the elderly, sick or disabled. One particular feature of this work is that it can generate a sense of
social isolation as care workers often work long and unsociable hours and many also live in with
their employers. In these circumstances, digital technology can offer an opportunity to connect with
others outside of the workplace and help to gain a sense of self that is separate from their identities
as care workers. Consider the example in the vignette in Activity 9.7.

Activity 9.7 Smartphones’ affordances for privacy

You should allow about 15 minutes for this activity.

Read the vignette of Dora below and then consider the questions that follow.

Dora
Dora, a Ukrainian migrant in Italy, spends her days caring for Mrs Lina, her 94-year-old
employer. She works long hours, six days a week. She lives in her employer’s home in a
small room and has very little space and time for privacy and connecting with her
daughter and mother back home. The long hours and limited privacy used to make Dora
feel ‘trapped’ in her employers’ home. Yet, with the advent of smartphones, Dora and her
colleagues feel there are more opportunities to enjoy time with family back home:
‘Intimate conversations take place sitting on the park banks in free time, in supermarkets
during the grocery shopping, or walking on the road while pushing silent elderly people in
their wheelchairs’.

(Monini, 2018, p. 119).

What do you think are the affordances of smartphones that allow Dora and her colleagues a
sense of privacy?

Save and reveal discussion Reset

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One aspect of smartphones that affords migrant domestic workers more opportunities for privacy is
the portability of smartphones. Even when they may only have a short break between tasks, for
example when out shopping for their employers, they can use the smartphone to connect with their
family and friends back home. A smartphone’s connectivity to the internet also allows migrant
domestic workers to talk or make video calls more cheaply. By using social media sites, migrant
domestic workers can also socialise with friends and family on their smartphones, even when they
have only limited time or where they are not able to leave the house, for example if they need to be
available to their employers overnight. If they are allowed to use their employers’ Wi-Fi, they can
further reduce costs of connecting with their family and friends. The small size of smartphones is
another advantage, as many have small bedrooms where they cannot accommodate large
computers.

6.1 Digital media: enabling migrants’ self-representation

The next activity features a short video about a Romanian migrant woman who works as a caregiver
for an elderly person in a small Italian town. This was filmed as part of a large research project into
the different ways in which people around the world use social media.

Activity 9.8 The presentation of self

You should allow about 30 minutes for this activity.

Watch Video 9.2. While watching this clip, think about how social media gives the woman
more power to influence her presentation of self. Write down the different ways in which the
migrant domestic worker feels Facebook helps her to present herself to others in ways she
chooses.
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 Save and reveal discussion Reset

In the video, the domestic worker explains that her job is to look after sick or elderly people.
However, in Romania, where she originates, people find it hard to believe that she can earn a living
from care work. Although she does not say this explicitly, in many communities, migration of women
is stigmatised, as they are seen as vulnerable to exploitation. Therefore, people in her home town
may think that instead of being a care worker, she engages in other work, such as sex work or
criminal activity. Being able to show her friends and family in Romania her workplace and the people
with whom she works on webcam allows her to prove ‘that you are who you say you are’, that she is
indeed a care worker.

She expresses that Facebook allows her to share her ironic side with her friends. Before the advent
of social media, she rarely could show that side to anyone as her work circumstances meant she
could not socialise much outside of her employer’s household.

Finally, when she takes photos with her friends and posts them on Facebook, she also has the
power to influence her presentation of self. She chooses a backdrop of pretty trees, as well as the
outfit, make-up and pose. This contrasts with her working life, where she does not have much
opportunity to convey an image of herself as fun and carefree, but instead has to emphasise other
aspects of herself, such as being caring, responsible and available to her employers.

6.2 Digital media: migrants representing their rights

In the previous activity, you looked at how the Romanian domestic worker in Italy uses Facebook to
give her a sense of power over her presentation of self. She expresses that Facebook allows her to
show her fun side, for which she does not have another outlet as her work is very time-consuming
with little opportunity to socialise. In the following activity, you will look at Facebook or similar social
media platforms to reflect on how they allow users to present themselves and how they enable
support networks among migrant domestic workers.
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Figure 9.9 Using social media.

Activity 9.9 Facebook and the presentation of self

You should allow about 30 minutes for this activity.

Having learned about the ways in which this migrant domestic worker uses Facebook, now go
to Facebook or a similar social media platform and look at how these are being used. If you
have an account already, you might look at how you and your friends use it. However, you
don’t need a Facebook account to do this activity.

Question 1 Look at some publicly available pages, for example the OU Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences page or this Digital Sociology group.

Question 2 Now search for groups for migrant domestic workers. You might come up with
some of the following groups, or with other examples:

Support Rights of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon

Migrant Domestic Workers and Migration Law in the EU

ADWA (Asian Migrant Domestic Workers Alliance)

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 Take a look at these websites and consider in which ways they can offer support to migrant
domestic workers.

Reveal discussion

In this and the previous sections, you have deepened your understanding of how migrant families
use digital technologies to maintain a sense of closeness, and how migrants can use digital
technologies for support. As you saw in Chapter 5, family life is only one example of the ways in
which migrants use digital technologies to maintain a sense of belonging and participation. In the
next sections, you will explore some aspects of how migrants use religion for a sense of belonging
and to participate in both their home communities and their new countries.

7 Pentecostal growth since the late 20th century

In the previous sections, you have explored how migrants use digital technologies to maintain ties
with their families. In this section, you look at a different example of transnational ties, that of
religion. As you learned in Chapter 5, transnational religion has been using digital technologies to
enhance a sense of belonging among believers. Pentecostalism is one example of a religious group
that has a particular commitment to growing its body of believers transnationally.

In the following activity, you will now explore global trends, including the growth and projected
growth, of Pentecostal Christianity to understand the wider context in which its transnational
networks operate.

Activity 9.10 Trends in global Pentecostalism

You should allow about 1 hour for this activity.

First, spend about 5 minutes looking at this online map of Pentecostal Christianity, which is on
the Atlas of Pentecostalism website. Then answer the following questions.

Question 1 What are the three main sets of data represented on the map?
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 Save and reveal discussion Reset

Question 2 Where have been the main global regions of Pentecostal growth between 1970
and 2010? Do any particular national examples stand out to you?

Save and reveal discussion Reset

Question 3 Between 1970 and 2010, what was the increase or decrease of Pentecostalism
as a percentage of the national Christian population of:

(a) the UK (tick one):

increase of 3.20%

decrease of 2.50%

increase of 2.20%

Check your answer Reveal answer

(b) the Netherlands (tick one):

increase of 5.20%

decrease of 3.00%

increase of 2.53%

Check your answer Reveal answer

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 Question 4 What might the map data suggest, in broad terms, about future trajectories of
global Christianity up to 2050? Keep in mind that these are only projected data.

Save and reveal discussion Reset

In this section, you have explored trends in global Pentecostalism. One product of these trends in
global Pentecostalism has been, and will continue to be, the production of transnational
connections. As you will explore in the next section, digital technologies, such as websites, play an
important role in creating a sense of transnational religious belonging and participation.

8 Transnational religion and digital technologies

In Chapter 5, you looked at the ways in which Pentecostal churches in the Global South utilise
digital technologies to build transnational networks. You are now going to watch a video that
explores several Pentecostal websites.

Activity 9.11 Building transnational networks

You should allow about 40 minutes for this activity.

Watch this screencast, Video 9.3. It will consolidate some of the aspects of digital
Pentecostalism that you read about in Chapter 5. As you do so, take notes to address the two
questions that follow.
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 Question 1 How effective do you think this technology might be in building transnational
networks?

Save Reset

Question 2 What issues and questions raised in the screencast might be more widely
applicable if you were to research other online examples of transnationalism and digital
religion?

Save and reveal discussion Reset

9 Conclusion
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This week, you have explored how digital technologies are part of transnational networks. To do
this, you have looked at two cases, that of transnational families and the case of transnational
religion. You have encountered the module thread power and inequality and in doing so considered
concepts such as connected presence, always-on lifestyles and religion as social capital. If you are
unclear about anything you have studied this week, remember you can seek help from your tutors
or on student forums.

Resources for independent study

You now have four hours for revisiting material from the week, independently researching the ideas
and theorists in this week’s study, or delving into the following optional resources:

You can use this time to explore a reference from Chapter 5 further. You can also explore some of
the following resources in your independent study:

Explore the website ‘Why We Post’. This website has several written and audiovisual
resources about a large-scale research project that investigated how people in different parts
of the world use digital media. You will notice that some of them have been used for this
module.

Watch Video 9.4 Rising to the occasion: father-carers in transnational families in the
Philippines, a short film about how fathers’ roles change when mothers migrate.

Search for the following article using Library Search: King-O’Rian, R.C. (2015) ‘Emotional
streaming and transconnectivity: Skype and emotion practices in transnational families in
Ireland’, Global Networks, 15(2), pp. 256–273. Read the article and think about how these
families were able to use digital webcams to maintain emotional closeness with their
transnational families.
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 Spend more time exploring the maps, academic interviews and film of the Redeemed Christian
Church of God (RCCG) on the Atlas of Pentecostalism website.

Read the article Asamoa-Gyadu, J.K. (2007) ‘“Get on the internet!” says the LORD’: religion,
cyberspace and Christianity in contemporary Africa’, Studies in World Christianity, 13(3), pp.
224–242.

References
Baldassar, L. (2016) ‘De‐demonizing distance in mobile family lives: co‐presence, care circulation
and polymedia as vibrant matter’, Global Networks, 16(2), pp.145–163.

Mills, C.W. (2000) The sociological imagination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Monini, C. (2018) ‘Parenting from a distance: the shifting topology of care in the net era’, Childhood
and Parenting in Transnational Settings, pp. 119–136.

Wilding, R. (2006) ‘“Virtual” intimacies? Families communicating across transnational contexts’,

Global Networks, 6(2), pp. 125–142.
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