Relational Bleeding, Bending, and Diffraction: Brazilian Transnational Children's Transgressive Digital Play on Roblox

ABSTRACT This article draws from a one‐year connective ethnographic study that examined Brazilian transnational children's composing practices on a digital gaming platform named Roblox. Building upon research on digital childhoods, transnational childhoods, and play, the authors thought with concepts of relational bleeding, bending, and diffraction to understand how participating children and parents constructed narratives and (re)configured relationships during gameplay. The findings highlight how Roblox was a space where children simultaneously reified and reorganised the relational and spatial conditions of their out‐of‐game lives. Thus, the authors emphasise a need for scholars to examine how children generate spaces for the maintenance of kinship ties, belonging‐making, and peer affinity in digital spaces despite the ideological and game‐based constraints therein.