Media, Culture and Communication in Migrant Societies – serie

Doing Digital Migration present a comprehensive entry point to the variety of theoretical debates, methodological interventions, political discussions and ethical debates around migrant forms of belonging as articulated through digital practices.,Digital technologies impact upon everyday migrant lives, while vice versa migrants play a key role in technological developments, be it when negotiating the communicative affordances of platforms and devices, as consumers of particular commercial services such as sending remittances, as platform gig workers or test cases for new advanced surveillance technologies. With its international scope, this anthology invites scholars to pluralize understandings of 'the migrant' and 'the digital'. The anthology is organized in five different sections: Creative Practices; Digital Diasporas and Placemaking; Affect and Belonging; Visuality and digital media and Datafication, Infrastructuring, and Securitization. These sections are dedicated to emerging key topics and debates in digital migration studies, and sections are each introduced by international experts. I. The emphasis on reflective ‘doing’ of digital migration studies. So far scholarship in this interdisciplinary focus area has remained relatively silent on the topic of accountability and questions of decision making in the research process. II. The truly transdisciplinary and international scope of the volume distinguishes this volume from the disciplinary oriented special issues and monographs published in the field of media and communication, anthropology, migration studies and refugee studies. Digital migration creates new challenges for cross-disciplinary dialogues that require an integration of ethnography with digital methods and critical data studies in order to look at the formation of identity and experience, representation, community building, and creating spaces of belongingness. III. The innovative emphasis on everyday lived experiences and practices sheds much needed light on the ways in which increasingly documented infrastructures of datafication and digitization are lived, negotiated and contested. For this purpose, the volume pays particular attention to the everyday use of digital media for the support of transnational lives, emotional bonds and cosmopolitan affiliations, focusing also on the role technologies such as social media and smartphones play in shaping local/urban and national diasporic formations. This is because it becomes increasingly important to give everyday digital media usage a central role in investigations of transnational belonging, digital intimacy, diasporic community (re)production, migrant subject formation, long-distance political participation, urban social integration and local/national self-organization.

Migration in the 21st century is one of the pre-eminent issues of our present historical moment, a phenomenon that has acquired new urgency with accelerating climate change, civil wars, and growing economic scarcities. Refugees and Migrants in Contemporary Film, Art and Media consists of eleven essays that explore how artists have imaginatively engaged with this monumental human drama, examining a range of alternative modes of representation that provide striking new takes on the experiences of these precarious populations. Covering prominent art works by Ai Weiwei and Richard Mosse, and extending the spectrum of representation to refugee film workshops on the island of Lésbos as well as virtual reality installations of Alejandro G. Iñárritu and works by Balkan and Turkish directors, such as Melisa Önel, the chapters included here focus on the power of aesthetic engagement to illuminate the stories of refugees and migrants in ways that overturn journalistic clichés.

Digital media is changing the ways in which religion is practiced, understood, proselytised and countered. Religious institutions and leaders use digital media to engage with their congregations who now are not confined to single locations and physical structures. The faithful are part of online communities which allow them a space to worship and to find fellowship. Migrant and mobile subjects thus are able to be connected to their faith -- whether home grown or emerging -- wherever they may be, providing them with an anchor in unfamiliar physical and cultural surroundings. As Asia rises, mobilities associated with Asian populations have escalated. The notion of ‘Global Asia’ is a reflection of this increased mobility, where Asia includes not only Asian countries as sites of political independence, but also the transnational networks of Asian trans/migrants, and the diasporic settlements of Asian peoples all over the world. This collection features cutting edge research by scholars across disciplines seeking to understand the role and significance of religion among transnational mobile subjects in this age of digital media, and in particular, as experienced in Global Asia.

This book offers an interdisciplinary perspective for general publics and academics interested in migration studies, family and gender studies, and media and communications.

Consists of eleven essays that explore how artists have imaginatively engaged with this monumental human drama, examining a range of alternative modes of representation that provide striking new takes on the experiences of these precarious populations.

This anthology is organized in five sections: Creative Practices; Digital Diasporas and Placemaking; Affect and Belonging; Visuality and digital media and Datafication, Infrastructuring, and Securitization. These sections focus on emerging key topics and debates in digital migration studies and are each introduced by international experts.