Digital/Postcolonial Belongings. Migration, Digital Practices & the Everyday

Abstract

This article focuses on how migrants appropriate and integrate digital technologies into their everyday lives to manage their local and transnational networks of belonging as media users. It aims to analyse the various forms of cosmopolitan belonging that cut across borders and media platforms. These practices counter the media representations of the recent migration crisis in Europe, where the voices of migrants have often been erased, silenced or denied. Yet, by analysing migrants’ digital engagements, we can detect multiple forms of participation, resistance and solidarity. These need to be studied in detail, both online–across social media platforms–and offline–through ethnographic participatory methods. This is a postcolonial approach to digital migration studies, which focuses on how the ‘connected migrant’ manages to rewrite the politics of belonging in Europe. We stress the importance of ethnography to make sense of these connections and make sure that the voice, agency and decision making of the migrants themselves are foregrounded. In particular, we focus on the importance of digital practices from southern Europe, where questions of stereotypes, minoritisation and marginalisation are magnified.