Unboxing care: Constructions of happiness and gratitude in a Brazilian transnational family’s video production in the United States

Abstract

This case study examines the co-authoring of unboxing videos by one six-year-old, second-generation Brazilian immigrant child and her mother in the United States. These videos were created in response to boxes filled with gifts they received yearly from relatives in Brazil. To understand this mother-daughter dyad and their video production, this study draws on metaphors of mobility, the logics of reciprocity and obligation in gift-exchange, and the concept of care constellations. The analysis of interviews, field notes, and unboxing videos identified specific routes, rhythms, and frictions that fueled this family digital literacy practice. It also suggested that participants were implicated in a pattern of caregiving through a transnational cycle of gift-exchange. These findings disrupt typical framings of the unboxing genre as a manifestation of U.S. capitalist ethos and foreground the material and discursive production of care in a transnational family’s digital literacy practice.