Being part of the life of one's hometown: Strategies to support community connectedness

Information and Communication Technologies can be instrumental for those who have moved away permanently from their places of origin. This paper presents a condensed analysis of interviews conducted with twenty six (26) Mexican migrants and family members living in Mexico. The interviews addressed several topics ranging from family communication to communication with the community in general. In this paper, we identify and discuss the strategies followed by those living away to keep the sense of community connectedness high. Among those strategies, we found that they keep connected with the community life through several sources following certain communication patterns which are used to as a way to reencounter with their people periodically. These findings serve to highlight the relevance of the role played by ICTs on supporting community connectedness for migrants and the opportunities for defining and developing new technologies.