Online Migrants
Author(s)
Publisher
Wiesbaden: Springer Verlag
Date issued
2016
In
Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten
From page
1
To page
8
Subjects
Online migrants e-diaspora Co-presence Transnationalism Transnational family Transnational habitus Cosmopolitanization
Abstract
Online migrants – as a symbiosis between homo mobilis and homo numericus – embody social transformations which are the result of unprecedented interconnectedness within mobile, cosmopolitanized social worlds.
Based on empirical qualitative research conducted on Romanian migrants over the last fifteen years, this chapter demonstrates that nformation and communication technologies (ICTs) facilitate the co- resence of mobile actors in multiple locations, enable new forms of ntergenerational solidarities within transnational families and enhance new connected ways of mobilization and cohesion at a distance. However, migrants’ ICT-mediated transnational practices present contrasting functions. ICTs can allow migrants to develop a sense of multiple belongings and to incorporate cosmopolitan values, while they also make it possible to uphold particular values and claim a specific cultural belonging while living anywhere in the world. This dialogical reality challenges migration theories with regard to a ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in migration studies.
Based on empirical qualitative research conducted on Romanian migrants over the last fifteen years, this chapter demonstrates that nformation and communication technologies (ICTs) facilitate the co- resence of mobile actors in multiple locations, enable new forms of ntergenerational solidarities within transnational families and enhance new connected ways of mobilization and cohesion at a distance. However, migrants’ ICT-mediated transnational practices present contrasting functions. ICTs can allow migrants to develop a sense of multiple belongings and to incorporate cosmopolitan values, while they also make it possible to uphold particular values and claim a specific cultural belonging while living anywhere in the world. This dialogical reality challenges migration theories with regard to a ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in migration studies.
Later version
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-658-08460-8_35-1
Publication type
book part