Smartphones, shopping, and the technomobility of migrant mothers

Abstract

Media studies scholars have noted the key role that mobile devices play in the migration experience. This chapter extends the concept of “immobile mobility” by considering how it can illuminate aspects of motherhood in migratory contexts. By examining the use of predominantly smartphone-based online shopping platforms by migrant mainland Chinese mothers in Hong Kong, we demonstrate how these technologies enable this group to construct lives and households in their newly adopted city. Engaging in online shopping has pronounced impacts in economic, material, and pandemic-related domains, in turn transforming the constraints of physical/social mobility. We argue that these examples highlight the pressing need to consider the wide-ranging technomobilities of motherhood, the transformations in mundane everyday practices they facilitate, and the potential avenues for the creation of agency that they are generative of.