The Vlogging Practices of Indonesian Marriage Migrants: “Obedient Husbands” and the Sense of Home (67358)
Session Chair: Rita Budiman
Sunday, January 8, 2023 (17:20)
Session: Session 3
Room: Live-Stream E
Presentation Type:Live-Stream Presentation
One of the issues that many people face in an increasingly mobile world is uncertainty and instability in the meaning of home. What makes us feel at home? This paper draws on research on the use of vlogs by Indonesian marriage migrants to create a sense of home. It looks specifically at the way these women use vlogs to assert agency in relation to their Western husbands. The analysis is based on ethnographic data collected from observations of vlogs and online interviews with Indonesian women in Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Scotland and Sweden. Drawing on the concept of ‘context collapse’, I argue that the women make strategic use of the fact that the experience of disorientation in digital media differs according to levels of familiarity with the contexts that are being 'collapsed'. The Indonesian marriage migrants are fluent in negotiating relations between Indonesian followers for vlogs and their Western home. Their husbands, by contrast, are disoriented, making them appear relatively vulnerable inside the digitally mediated Indonesian space. In sum, this paper examines the ways in which digital media are used in everyday life to construct new 'geographies of belonging', with a focus particularly on how these geographies are interwoven with intimate personal relationships. It suggests that the marriage migrants vlog about their husbands’ cultural disorientation to establish a sense of agency in the presence of their Indonesian followers, thereby reinforcing a sense of home.
Authors:
Rita Budiman, RMIT University, Australia
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Rita Budiman recently gained her PhD from RMIT University in Australia
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