Changing Tech, Same Struggles: The Hidden Burdens of Connectivity Among Older Filipino Australians and Their Social Networks

Digitalization is often equated with generative social connections, inclusive civic participation and socio-economic progress in an increasingly global society. Yet, despite the widespread use of fast-evolving digital communication technologies, certain groups remain digitally vulnerable. This paper examines the ways older Filipino Australians in Victoria, Australia and their distant networks across Victoria, Australia and the Philippines use mobile devices and online channels to forge and maintain everyday connections. Deploying the socio-digital inequality lens to analyse the data based on a qualitative ethnographic study using interviews and visual methods, the paper exposes the situated and relational casualties in digital environments often deeply shaped by deep-seated, limited and asymmetrical social welfare and infrastructural support as well as the accelerated utility of online platforms for exploitative profiteering. In such contexts, older Filipino Australians and their distant networks bear the brunt of navigating mediated failures and tensions to sustain personal and familial relationships. Ultimately, by centering the ramifications of an uneven and unstable digital terrain, the paper subverts the celebratory promise of everyday and transnational connectivity in a digital-by-default landscape.