DS Proposal

After graduating from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, this semester, I plan to travel to Bogota, Colombia. While there, I will also celebrate my Abuelita's, also known as my grandmother, 93rd birthday. While buying my airplane ticket, I began to think about the last time I spoke to my Abuelita and how sad it made me realize that the last time I had spoken to her was in 2014. Nevertheless, what I find more unfortunate is thinking of how my mother has also limited her communications with her, mainly because of my abuelita's age. Short conversations on the phone cannot replace the much time spent with her if my mother still resided in Colombia.

For this reason, I have decided to base my digital storytelling on migration, specifically how immigrant families react to long-distance relationships with loved ones. Having a topic regarding migration, the issues that can revolve around this topic is very relatable. Mainly because I am a migrant myself, but as well as my family. I am a family of five, and four of us, including myself, were born in Colombia. Since my abuelita's birthday is coming up, my digital story will serve two purposes besides completing the assignment. One purpose of the report will be dedicated to my mother and her relationship with her mom. The second purpose will be as a montage of the family that has missed the opportunity to be part of each other's life, which I can gift to my abuelita for her birthday. Demonstrating how important she is despite the lack of communication, we may give.

Long-distance relationships are defined by geographical separation from one another. According to the National Library of Medicine, aging immigrant families are studied on the importance of intergenerational relations proving an immigrant family's firm adherence to heritage culture and high prevalence of coresidence, close-knot relations, and frequent support exchanges. (Guo, Man et al, 2020) Mainly when referencing close-knit relationships it was referenced by the study performed by Guo, Stensland, Li, Beck, and Dong that "longitudinal studies on older adults have reported that over time, departure from cohesive family relations such as infrequent contact, emotionally distant relations, and reduced support elevated depressive symptoms" (Guo, Man, et al., 2020) 

As my first digital story, the treatment I have decided to use for my project would be option A: a short story narrative that uses no technical language. For this reason, instead of spending most of my time on technical glitches, I can focus on creativity and structural standpoints. Often I find myself having issues communicating, whether in person or on paper. The problem I encounter is the need for more straightforward communication to make my point more direct. Although the project is not on paper, the market has structured transitions to help flow discussions while remaining on-topic and straightforward. The intended audience is everyone because it would be geared toward increasing awareness. The awareness would be based on the older generations in long-distance relationships with family members and how we can help prevent a long-last effect that can cause adult children. There have been multiple media and articles on migration. Yet, as I was researching, I found less supporting media on the impact of long-distance relationships on adult children with their parents after being separated for many years already. The structure of my digital story will first reference my mother's background and her journey to the United States from Colombia. My mother will be the primary account because my grandmother is the only grandparent alive. Then the topic would transition to speaking of the remainder of the family and how she feels being separated from them. I would then get the opinions of other family members and see how the separation has impacted them as well. I would also like to get a segment where they would compare the emotions they had when being separated first happened compared to now, even after establishing their own lives. Another topic that will be discussed is the future. The future discussions would be based on whether she wants to travel back to Colombia at some point to stay close to family. Baldock mentions in her article, "The study also shows that such caregiving may involve an ongoing dialogue with the home country over many years and even the consideration of remigration as the consequence of family obligations and the perceived need for caregiving of family members in the home country." (Baldock, 2000) The thought of the need to be caregivers, as described by Andrew Fuligni, comes from cultural traditions that were instilled in the child regardless of the long distance, "Norms of children assisting the family in existing within the cultural traditions of many immigrant groups in their native countries, and these traditions take on genuine significance as immigrant families attempt to adapt to a new and different society" (Fuligni, 2006)

The supporting media, such as the music component, has yet to be decided. One aspect of the music is that it must be Latin mainly because it tends to have more of an emotional tone and fit with the main character's overall background. However, the music should be the last thing to consider since fitting other details around the music would be more challenging for me. 

In the future, I can perfect the process of having a digital story to persuade or make people aware of the issues a generation has and is facing. The digital story I hope to achieve would help enlighten the trauma that past generations and current generations faced and continue to face when faced with long-distance relationships. Using my own family as a reference is a trait that would help bring that personal background to something more relatable.

Work Cited 

Guo, Man et al. “Transition in Older Parent-Adult Child Relations in U.S. Chinese Immigrant Families.” The Gerontologist vol. 60,2 (2020): 302-312. doi:10.1093/geront/gnz146

Baldock, Cora Vellekoop. "Migrants and Their Parents: Caregiving from a Distance." Sage Journals, Mar. 2000, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/019251300021002004.

Fuligni, Andrew J. "Family Obligation among Children in Immigrant Families." Migrationpolicy.org, 21 Sept. 2021, www.migrationpolicy.org/article/family-obligation-among-children-immigrant-families/.