YouTubing Remittances, Revealing (Dis)connectedness

Copresence as Fiction, Ideal and Heuristic on the YouTube Channel of Western Union

Bibliographic Data

ID4263115
AuthorsP Boccagni (0000-0001-8379-8561, Department of Sociology University of Trento Trento Italy, corresponding author), Valentina Marconi (0009-0004-1476-0497, Department of Sociology University of Trento Trento Italy), Alberto Brodesco (Department of Sociology University of Trento Trento Italy)
Year2025
Volume25
Issue1
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGlobal Networks (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1470-2266 • E-ISSN: 1471-0374
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/glob.12505
OpenAlexW4402423607
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited63

Sending and receiving remittances is central to the negotiation of transnational family life, and to nourishing a sense of copresence among physically distant parties. Although the lived experience of this transaction has a very intimate and personal basis, it is also subject to increasing visual and public representation, as a part of the working of dedicated migration industries. Based on an in-depth exploration of the advertising materials on the YouTube channel of Western Union (WU), we analyse how money circulation is made visible, emplaced in migrant life circumstances and co-produced through visual narratives that illuminate the micro-foundations of copresence and its structural limitations. While following the rationale of a commercial product, and despite their idealized contents, WU's stories are revealing about the relational affordances for virtual copresence, its shortcomings and the social embeddedness of remittances in family life

Heuristic · Political science · Social connectedness · Sociology · Telecommunications · Computer Science · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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