The second element of the fantasy of wholeness is ethical. Intimacy is not simply something that is felt or the works of bio-matter constantly flung against other bio matter (Long
& Moore, 2013a), but involves ethical selves, strategy, and thus agency, satisfaction and potentially achievement. Intimacy, in other words, is a matter of problematization, interpretation and strategy that has enabling and disabling effects (disabling effects are discussed in the next chapter). Importantly, this thesis argues that migrants and some friends and family transform themselves into trans-local imagination brokers: A contemporary form of embodied and contingent ethical subjectification, encompassing migrants and friends and family, that shapes a duty or commitment to foster and connect imaginations of self to others that blurs categories of
friend/family, tourist/migrant, local/non-local and stayer/leaver. While the importance of imagination in fostering connections has been well discussed in globalization theory (Anderson, 2006; Appadurai, 1996; Urry, 2007), I wish to take this understanding a step further by arguing that connecting imaginations has become a form of situational ethical stylization. This duty constructs cognitive desires for re-developing relations by making the self knowable through relations with others. It is a mode of self-governance that interprets and intervenes in daily life by acting as a principal identifying and constructing daily conduct in terms of ICT practices, temporal rhythms of travel, performances during visits and horizons of belonging that orient the self trans-locally and attaches selves to others. This suggests viewing personal communities not as groups of friends and family, but containers of variations and divisions of imagination brokers.
A crucial first component in fostering imagination brokers is problematization. Re-casting social relations always involves being both yourself and being other to yourself in ways that create new possibilities for imagining self-other relations (Moore, 2011). Departing loved ones incurs a process or at least is linked to broader processes of problemitization of self and self-other relations. Some informants though, and not others, choose to make keeping in touch a key means through which to develop selves, within certain moments of the life course, and in parallel to those who migrated abroad. Several informants interviewed in Italy discussed their self-development related to employment, personal life, moments of the life course, leisure habits, and crucially, how becoming an imagination broker through virtual and physical forms of keeping in touch was linked to that development. Cinzia, for instance, a close university friend of Paola explained that she had gone through a difficult period in her life, in which she was professionally unsure of her direction and a few of her best friends (including Paola) had migrated to Paris and London: “Every time it’s terrible, when a friend leaves. You’re happy for them, you know that’s what they want, but it creates an imbalance. Several went away, I had a period where my best friends left. I was depressed.” After initial difficulties though, Cinzia described that she decided to adapt by using a combination of technology, her work and leisure life. In parallel, she started her own tech company, which required her to travel often and she also travels as a DJ. In addition, she is single, saying that her relationship status helped to do more with her work and improve her ability to keep in touch with friends. Overall, however, she
explained the importance of reorienting herself around connecting, using the different areas of her life to do so:
I got used to the idea…It becomes about creating occasions, often I go to Paris to play music, then I meet friends, I created the occasion…Facebook gives us the occasion for everyday contact…also Whatsapp, voice messages, pictures, when I want news of the kids (Paola’s), I tell her to send me pictures and tell me how they are. They’re beautiful.
Connecting imaginations becomes a means and indeed an ethical principle for transforming the self and tethering to others, and a means for recognizing the self in daily life.
Cinzia visits London and Paris on an ongoing basis and uses ICTs regularly. The VFR literature has emphasized the importance of people combining business or leisure trips with seeing friends or family and, in separation, digital communication (Backer & King, 2015). What needs to be highlighted, though, is the underlying identity politics and sense of agency that connects them.
Cinzia indicates that these trips are linked to the development of self, through a repositioning and realization of a mobile self in relation to migrant others. Moreover, problemitization of self and the choice of remaking self-other relations is in itself a form of care that crosses a variety of categories like kinship and friendship. Almost all informants, whether friends or family, described in this section displayed overcoming obstacles or previous perceptions related to travel or ICTs in some way. Some migrants, despite having migrated, loathe travel or the use of some or all ICTs and had to adapt; some, for instance, used ICTs or bought smart phones for the first time. Equally, non-migrant informants described travelling abroad or using ICTs for the first time, or having to make important modifications to already established practices. Paola’s mother, Flavia, for instance described her difficulties with travel and digital communications and that she had a strong desire to overcome them. As with Brigitte above, keeping in touch produced the hope and fantasy for solid bonds within a context in which she was a widow, having additionally lost a sister and a close friend. Flavia, described that her efforts for keeping in touch drew from the hope that her son would marry and have children and for Paola’s three children to one day come to visit them: “I would like very much that the kids come to see their cousins, that they create that kind of comradery between kids. That’s what I want: the big family, to have again a big family.” Importantly, though, while fantasy is a productive force, the work of ethical thought is equally important in bringing about transformation. It entails becoming an imagination broker,
or developing the self through ICTs and travel requires making the self into an object, in regard to travel abroad and being a mother in order to connect with her life, Fulvia explained this by saying:
So, I had to do a sort of violence against myself. I said ‘no, I have to go alone, to a foreign city’…I had never taken a plane before, I went to (the UK) to see her, and for her, I overcame all my fears to reach her. She saw this and I think it reassured her through the years, despite the distance I was there for her, concentrated on her, on what she was doing, on what she wanted to do, to support her.
Problematization with and for others is a key component driving the construction of desire for contact between friends and family. Overcoming obstacles of digital and physical mobility produces satisfactions and thus, is a key aspect of re-making selves in order to forge new socialites. Cinzia also described difficulties with flying, saying that to overcome her fear she is “always drunk, every time, it’s terrible”. The propensity to re-think selves, and embodied selves happens across categories of friendship kinship, age, class and gender. The common thread is a commitment to developing a relational ethics of constructing and distributing imaginations of self and others trans-locally.
7.3.3 Circulating Selves, Situating Others – Hosting, Guesting and Making the Familiar Strange