Digital Migration - Paperback

by Koen Leurs (Author)

"A revelation for digital researchers and a provocation for migration scholars... It introduces an insightful, inspiring, and inviting way of making sense of the messiness without losing hope of changing things."
- Nishant Shah, Chinese University of Hong Kong

"A must read for everyone who is concerned with questions of human mobility, media and communications and the digital border."
- Myria Georgiou, LSE

"A much-needed addition to scholarship on mobility, technology, and migration... The book is poised to become a touchstone text."
- C.L. Quinan University of Melbourne

In contemporary discussions on migration, digital technology is often seen as a ′smart′ disruptive tool. Bringing efficiencies to management, and safety to migrants. But the reality is always more complex.

This book is a comprehensive and impassioned account of the relationship between digital technology and migration. From ′top-down′ governmental and corporate shaping of the migrant condition, to the ′bottom-up′ of digital practices helping migrants connect, engage and resist.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Digital Migration explores:

• The power relations of digital infrastructures across migrant recruitment, transportation and communication.
• Migrant connections and the use of digital devices, platforms and networks.
• Dominant digital representations of migrants, and how they're resisted.
• The affect and emotion of digital migration, from digital intimacy to transnational family life.
• How histories of pre and early-digital migration help us situate and rethink contemporary research.
• The realities of researching digital migration, including interviews with leading international researchers.