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When I was about to finish my PhD in Australia, I had already been thinking of visiting the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) at 久久精品. My intention was partly driven by my interest in meeting scholars working in the field of mobilities. Further, I wanted to know more about the Centre, which was established by the late British Sociologist John Urry, one of the pioneers of the mobilities studies. I am no stranger to the work of Urry, and the many scholars of the mobilities field. Over the past years, I have been proactive in extending the mobilities lens in the context of transnational media and communication. More specifically, I have investigated how family life at a distance is performed and constantly negotiated in an era of intense migration and mobile media. Significantly, Urry\u2019s work has been crucial in my critical reflections on how divide, hierarchy and inequalities are interplayed through digital media use among transnational Filipino family members. Often, the use of ubiquitous smartphones and networked communications platforms becomes a practical modality to forge and sustain familial relationships that are essentially reconfigured and undermined by the uneven impacts of globalisation.<\/p>\n
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I have never thought that I will live a life of what I call a scholar on the move. Prior to becoming an academic, I was working as an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) in an advertising firm in Brunei Darussalam. It was then through my experiences that compelled me to enrol myself into a PhD program, with a particular goal of examining how geographically separated family members use digital media to sustain family life. As I partake into research, I led a mobile life in a different context. I moved from one place to another to conduct research. In my investigation of how transnational family members use digital media in sustaining family life at a distance, I collected data across places in Australia and in the Philippines. Such multi-sited approach of gathering data signified ways of capturing and analysing the lived conditions of my informants as created by the movements of people, places, capitals, services, and information. Further, airports, lounges, or any safe and available public spaces have become liminal spaces to process the data based on extensive data collection. Significantly, I would argue that mobilities \u2013 short and long-range \u2013 as well as stasis \u2013 temporal and permanent \u2013 reflect the many lives of contemporary scholars. In a mobile era, a scholar performs, embodies and negotiates various and interconnected forms of mobilities in order to generate and analyse data, therefore contributing to articulating a social world engendered, undermined or made complex through mobilities. And more recently, as a scholar on the move, I found myself \u2018moored\u2019 \u2013 temporarily \u2013 to one of the world\u2019s knowledge hub on problematising the possibilities and limits of a mobile world, the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) at 久久精品.<\/p>\n
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I applied as a Visiting Researcher in CeMoRe, which was supported by Professor Monika Buscher, the Director of CeMoRe. With the support of my university, Deakin University, as well as the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation where I am a member, I stayed in the centre from 10 \u2013 27 June. During my visit, I engaged with a wide range of scholarly activities, including facilitating a reading group, presenting my work in a seminar, as well as participating in an away day session. Overall, I did enjoy delivering and participating in various activities, allowing me to learn more about approaches and techniques in conducting mobilities research as well as to rethink my approach and theorising of mediated mobilities in a transnational context. Significantly, the various engagements provided a space for networking, exchanging ideas and planning collaborative work.<\/p>\n
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My first activity in the centre was facilitating a reading group, Rethinking immobility in a mobile society<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Prior to my arrival in Lancaster, I chose and assigned the journal article for the reading group, Understanding Immobility: Moving beyond the mobility bias in migration studies <\/em>by Kerilyn Schewel. I specifically chose the work by Schewel because I have been thinking about and dissecting the \u2018paradoxes\u2019 and \u2018contradictions\u2019 enabled in a globalised and networked society. Such point has been reflected in the findings of my study, emphasising how transnational family members are mobilised and immobilised in many ways. In here, mobile device use is often informed and constrained by immobile gendered norms and familial expectations. Further, I also refer to immobile technological infrastructures that shape mediated movements. However, during the reading group, I was struck by Professor Buscher\u2019s observations. More than engaging with the concept of immobility or why individuals choose to stay put, as articulated by Schewel in her work, Professor Buscher pinpointed the need to re-examine the motivations behind the use of digital media technologies among dispersed family members. She further expanded her point by illuminating the \u2018pressures\u2019 to experience proximity in a society that is being constantly re-shaped by the demands of global economies. Ultimately, my discussion with the participants of the reading group led to my assessment of the motivations and outcomes of mediated mobilities among dispersed family members in an environment where technologies, infrastructures, platforms, social structures, and economic and political systems collide.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n