Abstract
This study focuses on the role of ICT in transnational communication between family members, mainly between elderly parents and adult children living abroad. A semi-structured interview study (N = 32) was conducted during Fall 2015 in three neighborhoods in the city of Sousse, Tunisia. In the study, Skype played a central role in the respondents’ transnational communication and a driving factor of technology adoption. Families used Skype to communicate with their migrant family members and virtually engage in family activities such as cooking and attending wedding events through the screens of their laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. In other words, Skype evolved from a simple online communication medium to a platform for a transnational family space; it assumes a Tunisian identity and essence stemming from the social practices and experiences of the Tunisian users and becomes shaped by their values and traditions.
Introduction
This article examines Tunisian families’ use of Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) for transnational communication with migrant children. I particularly focus on families’ urge to communicate with the physically absent family member and how that impacts attitudes toward ICT, leading to the adoption or dismissal of ICT. These latter have undeniably transformed the way families communicate across borders. The new migration communication landscape has evolved from waiting weeks and months for a letter to reach the other part to instant communication and connectedness (Nedelcu and Wyss, 2016). Transnational communication has become an integral part of the daily life of immigrants, their acculturation process, and their families at the homeland (Gonzalez and Katz, 2016; Nedelcu and Wyss, 2016).
The overarching goals of the study aimed to examine how attitudes and motivational factors influence the use of (ICT) and thus contribute to reducing or expanding the digital divide gaps. Information, Communication, Technology provide an array of social benefits but also engender significant social and economic gaps between those who have access and skills and those who do not (Castells, 1983; DiMaggio and Hargittai, 2001; Foley and Ferri, 2012). Access has become less of a divide issue in many countries, prompting researchers to look at the usage gaps among those with access to ICT (DiMaggio and Hargittai, 2001; Straubhaar et al., 2012; Van Dijk, 2005). Some of the key determinants of the digital divide besides access include social and cultural, as well as skills and motivational factors.
I built on social and media studies arguing that technologies are manipulated by human agents of a particular society for specific social situations, resulting in the creation of modes of usage that are specific to their social context (Bakardjieva, 2005; Leaning, 2009). Indeed, research from family communication literature demonstrates that transnational families use ICT to invent new ways of ‘doing family’ across space and time (Alinejad, 2021; Morgan, 1996; Şenyürekli and Detzner, 2009). Mediated, immediate communication migrants’ family members the family maintain traditional communication patterns, create new ones, and invent new cross-border family-related activities resulting in better well-being for all parties involved (Beck, 2008; Nedelcu and Wyss, 2016). In this article, I examine how these cross-border communication patterns, not only preserve the family solidarity of Tunisian families but also drive their adoption of ICT.
This paper evolved from a research project conducted in 2015 to examine the extent of the digital divide in lower and upper middle-class neighborhoods in the city of Sousse, Tunisia, a small country in North Africa, with 11 million inhabitants. The country is now known as the birthplace of The Arab Spring when a vegetable street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself on December 17th, 2010, sparking a wave of protests that results in the escape of Ben Ali, Tunisia’s dictator of 23 years. Ever since, Tunisia has been going through a democratic and peaceful reform process with a significant segment of it taking place in the online space through ICT. That is why, it is important to explore community-based barriers and motivators to ICT adoption.
Given the rather scarce in-depth studies exploring ICT use in Tunisia (Zayani, 2015), a qualitative, in-depth interview study appears an adequate method to reach my research goal, which is to reveal trends and patterns of interactions with ICT that emerge as a product of the Tunisian context. In other words, what makes the Tunisian adopters and users’ experience and interaction with ICT different from adopters and users in different parts of the world? In his study of the pre-revolutionary digital culture in Tunisia, Zayani (2015) noticed the scarcity of research stemming from the Tunisian context. He stressed on the need for ‘historically grounded and theoretically informed analysis of micro-processes, cultural practices, and societal interactions that intersect with and are embedded in media usage, production, and consumption and anchored in evolving trends of socialized communication that are indissociable from everyday experiences and practices’ (p. 13). Inspired by Zayani’s (and other Tunisian scholars’) call for more research about the Tunisian everyday experience with ICT, this study analyzes the informants’ transnational communication and instant online family communication as motivational factors fostering attitudes and drives of ICT use. To analyze the data collected from 32 interviews with Tunisian 30 years and older living in the city of Sousse, I used a thematic analysis method along with an analysis of the demographic and social factors affecting the Tunisian context of ICT use.
Theoretical framework: Cultural factor and usage gaps
In order to reflect on how Tunisian families’ communication with their migrant children affect their ICT adoption, this paper engages with the ongoing literature of transnational families’ cross-border communication. The desire to maintain cross-border communication with migrating loved ones has pushed transnational families to adopt ‘family practices’ through ICT platforms (Cabalquinto, 2018. Alinejad, 2021). The prevalence and rather cheap cost of digital communication platforms facilitated transnational families’ communication. Şenyürekli and Detzner (2009) argue that both the migrants and their families in the homeland live in two localities, which compels them to use digital platforms to compress time and space and link the geographically distant localities. Alinejad (2021) used an ‘emotion-based framework to explore the transnational communication practices of migrant Romanian families in other European countries. The author argues that ICT become an integral part of the migrants’ emotional experience as daily mediated communication result in powerful emotional outcome for both parties. Cabalquinto (2018) used ‘mediated co-presence’ to refer to Filipino migrants in Melbourne’s performance of family activities through Skype. Cabalquinto observed that many Filipino migrants set up a ‘digital hub’ corner in their homes dedicated to their mediated co-presence activities. In other words, ICT mediated family communication not only transform the daily communication of the migrants and their families back homes but also transform their homes and their everyday practices. In addition to that, other studies demonstrated that ICT change the gender dynamic of the transnational family and challenge the digital skills gaps between different members of the family (Cabalquinto, 2018; Kang, 2012), thus not only expanding our understanding of transnational communication but also forcing us to rethink traditional family dynamics. Besides, this line of literature (Cabalquinto, 2018; Gonzalez and Katz, 2016; Kang, 2012) revealed that ICT facilitated communication either confirmed or challenged the digital competency gaps of the transnational family members. This research builds on these findings to explore how the use of digital platforms to sustain transnational family communication affects the adoption and attitudes toward ICT by Tunisian adults in the city of Sousse.
The current research also builds on an increasing impetus toward recognizing the role of culture-based attitudes on the adoption or the rejection of ICT. Several researchers argued that technology is not a neutral social artifact; rather, it derives its meaning from the cultural values and social structure in which it operates (Bakardjieva, 2005; Straub et al., 2002). This line of argument stressed on the importance of situating the technology within the cultural values and belief system of the technology they inhabit (Loch et al., 2003; Rojas et al., 2001; Straub et al., 2002). Loch et al. (2003) defined culture as the set of unconscious beliefs, values, and behaviors within a defined group or a community. Cultural values constitute a measure through which good and bad are distinguished and applied (Bagchi et al., 2015). Van Dijk and Hacker (2003) contend that a positive attitude toward ICT is indispensable for the adoption of the technologies. The lack of awareness of the benefits of ICTs and/or a negative attitude toward them obstruct usage even in the case of accessibility to the technologies. Rojas et al. (2001) situate attitudes and technology awareness among the members of a family and a community within the matrix of techno-dispositions fostering or hindering technology use. As Straubhaar et al. (2012) stated: ‘members of the same group are the product of the same objective conditions and share habitus without realizing that their practices are harmonized beyond what they as individual agents know or wish’ (p. 7). Thus, a habitus could be described as a discursive construction of the attitudes and behaviors resulting from years of social and cultural experiences and perceptions of the information technologies. For instance, a habitus that discredits the accessibility and benefits of ICT for one reason or another, poses serious challenges to the adoption of the technology within that group’s members. These latter reject the technology without consciously knowing that it is a direct product of their cultural habitus. This takes place regardless of the prevalence or scarcity of technology resources (techno-capital). Group habitus and its impact on technology adoption is particularly stronger in cultures with close-knit relationships between its members who tend to gravitate toward the community for behavior references (Bagchi et al., 2015; El Gody, 2006; Loch et al., 2003; Straubhaar et al., 2012).
This study proceeds from the premise that Arab society values and morals have a strong effect on usage patterns of Arab people and thus has an effect on the Tunisian society as well (Mills, 2005; Yaseen and Al Omoush, 2012). Tunisia could be described as a collectivist culture. The family is the center of all discourses, behaviors, and attitudes. However, I remained cautious in my analysis of the informants’ discourses and left my theoretical framework open for a grounded theoretical outcome that respects the social and cultural differences and disparities within the Arab world. Indeed, despite the similarities in the cultural and social values of the Arab societies, the influence of these elements on ICT adoption is far from being homogeneous. El Gody (2006) argues that there are deep educational, financial and social differences within the Arab world. In the case of Tunisia, while the country scores higher than other Arab societies in terms of gender equity and literacy indexes, its technological infrastructure is less developed than other countries and the cultural and family factors have strong influence on all levels of the Tunisian context.
Methods
This article presents the results addressing cross-border family communication. The results are taken from a larger qualitative study conducted in 2015 aiming to examine how attitudes and motivational factors influence the use of ICT and thus contribute to the digital divide gaps.
The study used semi-structured in-depth interviews to examine the lens through which Tunisians view different technologies and their usage. I consider how the sense of family and desire to maintain cross-border communication with family members form the basis of group habitus that significantly affect the acceptance of a technology and the rejection of another. While there is an ample amount of statistical data that describe ICT ownership and use in Tunisia (mainly from governments’ official data), I opted for a qualitative approach given the capacity of qualitative research to situate the technology within a specific place, and to provide the appropriate tools to analyze the interaction between the technology and the users without assuming the agency of one over the other. Miller and Slater (2001) argued that for a long time, research about the Internet examined technology as a ‘placeless’ (p. 1) device and invoked the need for qualitative research to understand how the Internet, along with other technologies are assimilated into the everyday life of individuals and communities.
The interviews were conducted in 2015 in the city of Sousse in Tunisia. Three neighborhoods were selected based on their socioeconomic status, which is middle and low-middle class, the classes most affected by the digital divide. Low socioeconomic status groups were categorized in early research as the ‘have-nots’. This categorization soon proved to obscure the complex digital experience of this social group that goes beyond the issue of access and ownership (Mehra et al., 2004). On the one hand, as technologies become more affordable, ownership is no longer a measure of social class or social disadvantage. On the other, establishing ownership does not eliminate issues such as digital competencies, relevance, and attitudes that may hinder or promote advantageous usage of ICTs.
I specifically targeted women and the elderly, which is another indicator of digital divide gaps all over the world. The elderly are most affected by the divide especially when age is combined with low income, few educational qualifications, and low literacy levels (Cullen, 2001). Besides, they are particularly affected by the consequences of the new form of digital divide, that is, lack of digital competencies given that younger generations develop digital and technological competencies at a faster rate than the older ones (Chen and Wellman, 2004; Correa, 2012). Indeed, almost all my elderly respondents reported little to no techno-competencies even when they owned the technology devices.
The second group, women, is considered a vulnerable group not only in Tunisia but in most societies and cultures. Women in the MENA region are particularly vulnerable because of many historical, social, and religious factors. El Gody (2006) argued that Arab countries must first address the issue of women’s rights in order to bridge the digital gap between the Arab world and the rest of the world. 1 I am particularly interested in investigating whether this applies to Tunisian women given that Tunisia is known for having one of the most progressive women’s rights bills and one of the highest literacy rates in the region. Nevertheless, Tunisia is still a patriarchal society and women continue to hold the second position in the gender scale (Sinha, 2011), which leads me to suggest that gender may be an important factor in women’s digital media use.
The interviews were conducted face to face in the participants’ chosen place, which was mostly the home. Given that I am a Sousse native, I had family and friends who lived all over town. I identified a personal connection in each one of my target neighborhoods and asked them to act as gatekeepers. They helped me approach my first respondent in each neighborhood and snowball sampling was used after that to identify more respondents. I used a laptop to follow my semi-structured questionnaire and record the interviews, with my respondents’ permission. Some interviews took place inside the home, which allowed me to collect observations, also with my respondents’ permission, about the technology available in the house and the family dynamic around the technology. Other interviews were collected outside the main doors of the house, where Tunisians usually sit in the afternoons facing each other’s houses, interacting with their neighbors and passerby, and watching the kids play. Tunisian middle-class neighborhoods are often narrow ranges of houses that do not have gardens. Thus, sitting outside is the main way people get fresh air and kids get a space to play. The mild, often warm, Tunisian weather allows for these types of social activities and interactions. The interviews that took place outside quickly developed into social events, with neighbors bringing their stools and little sitting rags and joining me and my interviewees and participating in the discussion from time to time. The house residents did not mind, to the contrary, they often made more tea to accommodate the large gatherings, which were intimidating at first but quickly proved to be an opportunity to gather more data about the community communication dynamic and collective attitude toward ICT use.
I wrote notes after each interview to organize my field notes, observations, and preliminary themes that emerged from my participants’ discourses. I continued to collect interviews until it appeared that I have reached a data saturation point, with no new information or usage patterns appearing from the last interviews. I ended up with 32 interviews with participants from different age groups but mostly over 50 years old. I was able to interview people representing three generations of the same family and had multiple occupation statuses (stay at home moms, retired drivers, retired nurses, and high school teachers both currently working and retired). Many of my informants reported that they lack basic digital skills. White-collar jobs and formal education emerged immediately as a source of techno-capital. I conducted the interviews in the Tunisian Arabic dialect, manually transcribed them, and translated them. I gave all the participants pseudo names to protect their privacy. I used my notes and the interviews to develop themes of analysis while remaining conscious of my ‘native’ researcher status. I strived to present as many details as possible about the settings, the analysis, and the results in order to reduce my researcher bias. I solicited the help of two colleagues from outside the Tunisian context to verify the analysis and ensure the credibility of the results.
Results and discussion
ICT access and ownership
Despite the fact that digital divide research has moved beyond the question of access as the determinant of digital gaps (Straubhaar et al., 2012; Van Dijk, 2005; Warschauer, 2002), the issue of access is still one of the key dimensions of the divide. Usage is dependent on access; indeed, it is often analyzed as ‘the first divide’ (Vehovar et al., 2006). Therefore, my first issue of investigation was ownership and access. I asked my respondents whether they own any kind of technology. I used ‘technology’ in its broadest term intentionally as I was curious what the term means to them. It was not a surprise that for almost all my respondents, regardless of their age, gender, income, or education level, the term generated a list of ICT devices: ‘I have a PC and a smartphone’ said Molka, a 32-year-old stay at home mom from the Kalaa neighborhood. The list was more extensive for Naima, a 52-year-old stay at home mom from the Zouhour neighborhood: ‘I have my own tablet and smartphone and we have a computer too’. Similar to Naima, many of my respondents had almost all the essential ICTs and many included Internet connection as one of the technologies listed: ‘I have a tablet, a laptop, and phone. I also have a desktop computer and Internet connection at home’. Said Yasmine, a 35-year-old high school teacher.
The lack of access gap did not surprise me. I have come to witness first-hand the widespread abundance of technology devices and Internet connection in Tunisian households. In fact, the respondents themselves are aware of the widespread penetration of ICTs; ‘We have everything’ was a phrase I heard often. Mobile communication and family members provide the other alternative mode of access. Ahlam, a 71-year-old stay at home mom, noted: ‘we had a computer that we used to see my daughter in Germany. We don’t have it anymore. . . now my youngest daughter comes with her computer and ‘connects’ us with her sister’. Both Refka’s statement above and Ahlam’s introduced one of the most often reported factors for computer ownership and Internet access, which is to keep in touch with family members who live abroad. Basma, a 55 stay at home mom from Kalaa, purchased a laptop for that particular reason. She said: ‘My son had one like this (pointing to my laptop), he used it to study. When he moved to Qatar, my husband bought me another one so I can talk to my son with it. So now my other two sons use it all the time and I use it to talk to my son in Qatar from time to time’.
Tunisia faced many economic challenges in the last decades related to financial crises and high unemployment rates pushing many of its citizens to seek employment and better economic opportunities in other countries. In 2015, the Migration Policy Institute reported that an estimated number of 1,223,000 Tunisians live abroad, with a little more than one million of them settling in European countries. This is a significant fraction of the total population estimated at about 11 million in 2015. 2 This means that most families in Tunisia have at least one immigrant member living abroad. They come from all ranges of social classes and regularly send remittances to their families in Tunisia. As of 2013, an estimated 2 billion US dollars were sent to Tunisia from Western countries in the form of immigrant remittances (Natter, 2015). In addition to money remittances, Tunisians living abroad often bring a diversity of host culture products and provide their families with phones, computers, or tablets, 3 so they can talk to them when they go back to their host countries. Several of my respondents who had modest jobs and lived in modest homes but had the latest technologies, acquired them through their migrating children. The latter either bought new devices specifically for their families in Tunisia or left their personal ones before they went back to the host countries after a vacation stay in Tunisia. Hadir, a 59-year-old retired hotel housekeeper, revealed that their household ICT devices were a mix of items they bought and items that her son who lives in Austria gave her: ‘We have a tablet and a computer. I have the old phone; I don’t want the new one. . . I like the old ones because when I get mad, I throw it to the wall and buy a new one (she bursts in laughter). Sometimes my son leaves whatever he has for us when he goes back to Vienna. He leaves the phone for his sister or the tablet. I bought the computer’. In line with Hadir’s report of technology acquisition, Kahina, the 57-year-old stay at home mom from Zouhour expressed proudly her constant adoption of the latest technologies through her three children who live in different countries in Europe. She stated: ‘My daughter brings me everything, everything that came out, she brought it for me as soon as it came out. We always had everything that just came out. My kids bring me everything’.
The remittances and the technology device ‘gifts’ from the children living abroad add a few other dimensions to the complexity of the relationship between access, social class, and income in Tunisia. First, the findings discussed above are in agreement with literature from Western studies in regard to the factors informing home computer purchase and usage (Cabalquinto, 2018; Fairlie and Robinson, 2013; Gonzalez and Katz, 2016; Kang, 2012). Second, my informants’ home computer acquisition counter the Western-based research findings that technology ownership is positively correlated to income (Ragnedda and Muschert, 2013). These findings support the new wave of digital divide research, which has driven attention away from the dichotomy of the haves versus the have-nots, to other forms of divide relevant to Internet usage and digital literacy (Jenkins 2006; Ragnedda and Muschert, 2013; Straubhaar et al., 2012; Van Dijk, 2005).
Family transnational communication and ICT use
According to Straub et al. (2002), Technology derives its meaning from the culture in which it operates. User assigned ICT values stem directly from the cultural and moral values of the society. This was clear in my group of informants’ attitudes toward ICTs. They saw technologies through their cultural filter and thus Skype passed the cultural test with honors. Skype has a privileged position in the informants’ lives, families, and discourses that it imposed itself in all my interviews. In fact, I added a Skype related question to my semi-structured questionnaire after it emerged in all six pilot interviews. Yet almost all my respondents discussed it before I asked them about it, showing how salient it was in their understanding and usage of ICT. For most of them, ICT was directly associated and, for many, synonymous to Skype use, whether because that is the only way they use the Internet or because most of the people around them use Skype.
Samia, a 61-year-old stay at home mom, was very excited to talk about Skype even though she did not know what it was called. When I asked her if she ever uses Skype, her answer was ‘no’ until her son, who was present at the time of the interview, intervened: ‘yes, you do, it’s that thing you use to talk to me and see me when I’m not here’. Samia’s tone changed, she now sounded happy talking about the medium: ‘Oh! That’s what it is! Yes, yes, I do, I use that. My other son ‘opens’ it and we use it. I asked him to show me how to use it and he’s teaching me right now. I’m still learning. I asked him, I told him: I want to be able to ‘open’ it by myself and use it by myself’. Here, it is important to note that the intervening son lives in Poland and was on vacation in Tunisia at the time to visit his family. It is also important to note how Samia’s desire to maintain instant communication with her migrant son is motivating her to learn how to manipulate the medium and the computer by herself. This is also echoed in Refka’s discussion about Skype: ‘I don’t know how to use Skype well. I know how to close it. But Radhia (the Publinet manager) is teaching me’. These statements demonstrate that maintaining family communication is not only an important factor in ICT access decisions but also an important motivator for the acquisition of techno-competencies.
A virtual family space
Skype is the means to virtually unite what geographical distance separates, not only in terms of communication, but also in terms of the social practices that they are used to perform as a family before their offspring migrated. For instance, Refka, the 54 years old stay at home mom spends time with her grandson whom she never met face to face but who’s used to her and knows her well because of their regular, long, Skype calls: ‘I see my son in Sweden, his house, his kids, what he cooked and what he ate. The other day he even showed me the soup he was cooking! You know, he puts his son in his lap and asks me to talk to him and I start playing with my grandson through the screen. I kiss the camera and my grandson would be laughing and jumping like he’s going to come to me through the screen’. Two years prior to the time of the interview, Refka virtually attended her son’s wedding. She described the experience in detail: ‘For my son’s wedding, they put the cameras on. . . and they have this room they rent for weddings. . . and they cooked Couscous and Tajine and Slata Mechwiya 4 and the drinks! There were even alcoholic drinks! I told him, it’s like you are here at home! He showed me the whole reception table. I was cooking Couscous here too. . . and then he showed me his wife. . . My daughter was crying, and he was holding back his tears. And I was crying too but was trying not to show him and was clapping. Then the neighbors came, and they started clapping and singing too. . . It was a wedding celebration through a piece of glass (referring to the screen)’. A wedding through a piece of glass sums the situation. It was a typical Tunisian wedding with all the elements present: the community, the traditional festive food, and the singing but through a virtual space. The geographical distance between Tunisia and Sweden was eliminated by the technologies, which provided Refka and her family a transnational space to be there for her son’s wedding and attend a celebration similar in nature to those Tunisians organize for their weddings in Tunisia. This type of practice is not a new trend in transnational family communication. Research from other part of the world has been revealing similar family activities taking place through digital platforms (Alinejad, 2021; Baldassar et al., 2020; Kang, 2012; Şenyürekli and Detzner, 2009). Baldassar et al. (2020) argued that in a transnational context, ‘home’ becomes both a spatial and temporal experience as the migrants and the family members in the home country rely on digital platform to reproduce the face-to-face family activities and traditions.
The ‘piece of glass’ transformed the notion of place and time and created a space for instant interaction through transnational virtual spaces. Refka described how she ends her video call with her son saying: ‘I would look at him and say: Aziz my son, goodbye! And he asks me: Mom do you know how to ‘close’ the conversation? And I say yes, the green thing is here (referring to the Call button on Skype). and I send him a kiss and then close it. And then I’m sad. I say: Oh god, my son is gone’. This last statement demonstrates that for Refka, the virtual presence and communication with her son is equivalent to or compensates for real presence. It’s only when the video call is over that she feels sad he is gone.
For the Tunisian informants, more of the usual offline social practices take place instantly despite the geographical distance. Adam, a 64-year-old retired kitchen assistant, reported: ‘We chat with my son on my daughter’s phone or on the laptop. We talk with him as if he is here. . . He would be in his house with his wife and kids and sometimes in Ramadan we watch him cook. . .’ For many, Skype was particularly important during Ramadan, which is a religious and cultural moment that has a special place in Tunisians’ life. People fast all day long and get together at sunset around the family table to break the fast. They usually cook a wide variety of food with a few staple dishes that have to be on the table everyday (e.g. a Tunisian soup, Tunisian egg rolls, and Tunisian salad). Collectively breaking the fast as a family is a revered tradition similar to the Thanksgiving dinner in the USA.
For the families that have someone living abroad, Skype allows them to connect with their geographically distant relative and virtually complete their family gatherings during Ramadan. Basma said: ‘In Ramadan sometimes, I would be breaking the fast and talking to him [her son living in Qatar], it’s as if he was here with me’. The talking takes place through the virtual space while the ‘here’ refers to her geographically bound location, her house and precisely her Ramadan dinner table. Nahla, a 62-year-old retired nurse, goes as far as reporting what could be described as a transnational kitchen: ‘Skype is great, my son has been there [in Canada] for two years and I don’t feel like I’m missing him that much. I see him every night. I see his house, I see his wife. Sometimes she asks me how to cook something, so she puts the camera in the kitchen and I tell her what to do. My son too, especially in Ramadan. When he cooks, I tell him now put this, now add that, now cut the onions. . . Now wait a little. . . And then when it’s done, he tastes it and says: Mom, it’s delicious! And I tell him: ‘of course! It’s like ‘I’ cooked it’ (she laughs)’. Nahla, does not only give her son or daughter in law recipes of Tunisian Ramadan dishes, she essentially spends time guiding them while they cook. When I asked Layla, a 72-year-old stay at home mom, about her view of the Internet, her response was similar to Basma’s as it was grounded on the time she spends talking to her daughter via Skype. She said: ‘I think it’s a great thing. It brought people who are far away closer. You know in Ramadan, my daughter in Italy she asks me, mom how do you cook this thing? So I have the computer next to me and I show her, I tell her do this, do that. I tell her: boil the water, add the flour, add this. . . Add that. . . and she does what I tell her. She tells me: it came out great. If there was no computer and no Internet, I wouldn’t even see her!’
Kahina also described moments of Ramadan cooking that she shares with her son who lives in Europe. She said: ‘In Ramadan, he would be cooking in the kitchen, and I would be in the kitchen. . . and the iPad right next to me. . . I always have the iPad next to me. . . like a TV set. I would be cooking and showing him what I’m cooking and what I did or ‘put’. Then he shows me what he is cooking. We would be talking like he’s here. Even when he comes, I don’t feel like I missed him that much, ‘chab-anin beb-athna’ (a common Tunisian phrase which literal translation is ‘our hunger for each other is satisfied)’. In fact, it is worth mentioning how the transnational kitchen is both supporting existing family ties and traditions but also challenging them. Given that the kitchen is not the typical place for men in the Tunisian society, these moments of shared cooking with the ‘sons’ is a product of the intersection of immigration and the Internet. Immigration compels the migrating sons to enter the kitchen and cook for themselves, especially in Ramadan. Their nostalgia for the Ramadan table and family time drives them to cook for themselves under their mothers’ supervision. The Internet allows them to instantly use their mothers’ knowledge and experience to make authentic Tunisian dishes. They spend quality time in their respective kitchens, which have been virtually connected despite being geographically separated. Thus, immigration and the Internet not only strengthen the preexisting family relationships, but also help in overcoming years of predefined gender roles that kept the men out of the kitchen.
It is not only in Ramadan that the migrating children spend virtual time together with the family through Skype, they also include their families back home in their overall transition experience. For example, Basma’s son gave her a tour of downtown Doha in Qatar. She said: ‘My son went in the traditional town where he lives in Qatar. He connected with me with his phone and he started showing me the town. . . he showed me the streets, the shops. . . everything! And then he said ‘goodbye, I’m going to have dinner now’. He always does that, he shows me where he’s going, what he’s doing. . . everything’. In her discourse about Skype, Kahina articulates its ability to delete the geographical distance. She said: ‘I think the Internet is the best thing that ever happened. It brings those who are far away really close. You need to drive 3 hours to go to Beja but via Internet, you can bring Beja (a city in Northwest Tunisia, about 300 km away from Sousse) to you. . . in front of you in one minute! In one minute, I can see my son (in Italy), I see him even when he is in his car. My daughter gave birth two days ago in Germany. A few minutes after she gave birth, she showed me the baby and I saw her and saw that my daughter was okay. If it wasn’t for the Internet I would not have seen my daughter and looked at her face to know that she was ok’. The informants’ shared activities with their migrant children take place in a virtual space that creates a sense of proximity and relieves feelings of longing, despite the geographical disconnection. Wafa, literally articulated many informants’ view that technologies are a remedy for homesickness: ‘Society is better today. You know, we used to hear some say that there will be a time when you get a phone that ‘looks at you and you look at it’ and we used to say: What? No way! It sounded. . . just weird. But now it’s a normal thing. And the Internet is great. It is great for homesickness and missing your kids’.
Conclusion
Using in-depth interviews, the study explored ICT use by Tunisian families to maintain transnational communication with their family members abroad. The analysis revealed that transnational communication acted as a significant factor in ICT use and a key factor in reducing the usage gap. ICT use was a motivational factor fostering positive attitudes and drives ICT access, usage, and digital skill acquisition. Skype occupied a central role in the lives of the participants who had had a family member living abroad. It became a symbol of family solidarity and well-being. On the other hand, the findings reiterated the migration and ICT literature which shows that migrants’ families not only use ICT to satisfy their yearning for their family members, but also use them to reinvent family practices and traditions in a transnational setting. The immigrants and their families in the home countries often sustain modes of communication that create a network of cross-border cultural, social, and economic relations, all taking place on a transnational space and setting (Basch et al., 1994; Guarnizo, 1997) and engage in transnational activities that help in reconfiguring the traditional dynamic within the family. To satisfy their nostalgia for Tunisian meals, male migrants were compelled to participate in kitchen activities with the virtual assistance of their mothers. Being in the kitchen is not traditionally common for male Tunisians, yet, traditional Tunisian family roles are clearly reconfigured as a result of migration and digital space. This particular observation was not echoed in studies from other cultures. In their study of Chinese migrants in London, Kang (2012) found that gender dynamic negatively affected the family’s transnational migration. Because of the women’s lack of digital skills, the men of the family assumed full control over the transborder communication, including transferring emotional care practices to the men while it is traditionally a task attributed to the female members of the family. As a result, the women of the family were ‘silenced’ while the men where even more empowered (Kang, 2012). That being said, Kang’s respondents were actively seeking to expand their digital skills through the assistance of younger family members or other people in their social network. In his study of Filipino migrants in Melbourne, Cabalquinto (2018) also found that the digital communication experience is greatly affected by socioeconomic and digital skills gaps. Thus, both the migrants and their families attempt to find ways to close the gaps in order to sustain the digital communication channels. In this regard, this study confirms these previous findings arguing that transnational family communication drives the family members’ desire to expand their techno-competencies in order to have full control over the transnational communication with their distant loved ones.
Based on this study’s respondents’ narratives, Skype functions as the platform for this transnational space; it assumes a Tunisian identity and essence stemming from the social practices and experiences of the Tunisian users and becomes shaped by their values and traditions. The users shaped its space and manipulated it according to their belief system and their daily life habits. Consequently, a new cultural layer is added to the definition of space and time. Nevertheless, within this space of flow, the migrants and their families’ position in the migration network is reconfigured and rearranged. Indeed, many research studies focus on the immigrants themselves as the ones living a dual and transnational life. Glick-Schiller (2003) uses the term ‘transmigrants’ to refer to immigrants whose lives are rooted in and connected to two different geographical territories through technology-facilitated communication. Yet, based on this study’s informants, I argue that the families in the home country are themselves emblematically transmigrants. Their daily existence is embedded in two different territories not only emotionally but also in virtual practices and activities. They accompany their children in virtual tours in the host cultures, attend weddings, visit the newly born grandchildren, and cook and eat on a transnational space of flow. Thus, the combination of ICT, immigration, and strong family ties, are adding another layer to our understanding of transnationalism and transmigration.
Furthermore, the users’ social practices are also shaped by the technologies; driven by their family values, the informants who reported spending quality time with their offspring online are mostly elderly who appropriated a function of ICTs to maintain the family unit. In other words, they adopted information technologies to satisfy a specific emotional, social and cultural need. Thus, the way that the ‘piece of glass’ as Refka called it, functions as a transnational agent of family solidarity and unity generated a positive view of the Internet and its applications. The users shaped its space and manipulated it according to their belief system and their daily life habits. These transnational communication habits also add a new Tunisian-specific dimension to the transnational space of flow and added to the digital and migration literature of this part of the world. This study supports literature from other parts of the world by demonstrating that cultural attitudes and family dynamic are indeed strong drivers of ICT adoptions. The study also confirmed global transnational family communication arguing that digital platforms become the space in which migrants and their left-behind family members reproduce and reinvent their family dynamic, experiences, and traditions. However, given the limitation of community-based qualitative research, future studies from other Tunisian communities are necessary to expand our understanding of transnational communication through digital platforms. Research from other places in the region is also required to situate the findings of the current study within a larger regional, North African and Middle Eastern context.
