[Air-L] Special collection Forced migration and digital connectivity in(to) Europe - published in Social Media + Society

Thu Apr 12 03:50:42 PDT 2018

Dear colleagues,

    I’m excited to announce a special collection Kevin Smets and I have 
    edited titled “Forced migration and digital connectivity in(to) Europe” 
    has now been published in /Social Media + Society 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/page/sms/collections/special-issues/forced-migrants-and-digital-connectivity>/. 

    Digital migration has emerged as a contentious topic during the recent 
    so-called “European refugee crisis.” The wide circulation of news images 
    of smartphone carrying Syrian refugees, and Syrian refugees taking 
    selfies upon their safe arrival on European shores became resources for 
    various actors in Europe to imagine themselves and their relation to 
    incoming others. Digital technologies have been mobilized and imagined 
    in contrasting ways by different groups of state actors: for example, as 
    a way of understanding contemporary migration, as a way to control 
    mobility, as a way to attack it, as a way to esthetically capture it, 
    and as a way to uncover agency. Focusing on the context of Europe, this 
    special collection of /Social Media + Society /seeks to historicize, 
    contextualize, empirically ground, and conceptually reflect on the 
    impact of digital technologies on forced migration.

    We position our intervention in response to the recent upsurge of 
    popular and emerging academic debate on refugees and digital 
    technologies, and it is our specific ambition to recover and foreground 
    again a shared commitment toward social change, equity, and social 
    justice. By reflecting on what is specific about digital connectivity 
    and refugee experiences but also by acknowledging parallels with other 
    communities, we plea for reflexive politics of knowledge production on 
    digital migration. This emerging research focus which seeks to 
    understand the relation between migration and digital media technologies 
    can be labeled digital migration studies.

    The collection consists of 14 pieces authored by 27 collaborators: 
    alongside our introduction, there are 10 original research papers 
    included, as well as 3 thematic book reviews that include a Q&A dialogue 
    with the authors of the reviewed books. Authors draw on online and 
    offline fieldwork and empirical data covering various forced migrant 
    communities including Syrians, Somalis, Palestinians, Tamils, and Iraqis 
    across contexts including Austria, France, Germany, Sweden, Somalia, the 
    Netherlands, and Turkey

    In the introductory essay titled ‘Five questions for digital migration 
    studies: Learning from forced migration and digital connectivity in(to) 
    Europe, we elaborate digital migration as a developing field of 
    research. Taking the exceptional attention for digital mediation within 
    the recent so-called “European refugee crisis” as a starting point, we 
    reflect on the main conceptual, methodological and ethical challenges 
    for this emerging field and how it is taking shape through 
    interdisciplinary dialogues and in interaction with policy and public 
    debate. Our discussion is organized around central questions: (1) Why 
    Europe? (2) Where are the field and focus of digital migration studies? 
    (3) Where is the human in digital migration? (4) Where is the political 
    in digital migration? and (5) How can we de-center Europe in digital 
    migration studies? Alongside establishing common ground between various 
    communities of scholarship, we plea for non-digital-media-centric-ness 
    and foreground a commitment toward social change, equity and social justice.

    All articles are freely available in open-access format.

    *Five Questions for Digital Migration Studies: Learning From Digital 
    Connectivity and Forced Migration In(to) Europe 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764425>**
    * <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305117750716>Koen 
    Leurs and Kevin Smets. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764425> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764425> |

    *The Mediation of Hope: Digital Technologies and Affective Affordances 
    Within Iraqi Refugee Households in Jordan* 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764426>*
    * <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305117744392>Mirjam 
    A. Twigt. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764426> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764426> |

    *Anti-refugee Mobilization in Social Media: The Case of Soldiers of 
    Odin* <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764431>
    Mattias Ekman. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764431> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764431> |

    *The Ambivalent Potentials of Social Media Use by Unaccompanied Minor 
    Refugees* <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764438>
    Nadia Kutscher and Lisa-Marie Kreß. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764438> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764438> |

    *Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone 
    Infrastructures and Affordances* 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764440>
    Marie Gillespie, Souad Osseiran, Margie Cheesman. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764440> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764440> |

    *Smart Refugees: How Syrian Asylum Migrants Use Social Media Information 
    in Migration Decision-Making* 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764439>
    Rianne Dekker, Godfried Engbersen, Jeanine Klaver, Hanna Vonk. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764439> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764439> |

    *The Best, the Worst, and the Hardest to Find: How People, Mobiles, and 
    Social Media Connect Migrants In(to) Europe* 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764428>
    Maren Borkert, Karen E. Fisher, Eiad Yafi. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764428> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764428> |

    *On Digital Passages and Borders: Refugees and the New Infrastructure 
    for Movement and Control* 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764432>
    Mark Latonero, Paula Kift. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764432> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764432> |

    *Refugees and Network Publics on Twitter: Networked Framing, Affect, and 
    Capture* <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764437>
    Eugenia Siapera, Moses Boudourides, Sergios Lenis, Jane Suiter. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764437> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764437> |

    *Connected Routes: Migration Studies with Digital Devices and Platforms* 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764427>
    Natalia Sánchez-Querubín, Richard Rogers. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764427> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764427> |

    *Rerouting the Narrative: Mapping the Online Identity Politics of the 
    Tamil and Palestinian Diaspora* 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764429>
    Priya Kumar. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764429> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764429> |

    *Book review: Social media in Southeast Turkey: Love, kinship and 
    politics* <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764434>
    Kevin Smets. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764434> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764434> |

    *Book review: Media, diaspora and the Somali conflict* 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764424>
    Ilse van Liempt. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764424> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764424> |

    *Book review: Mobile commons, migrant digitalities and the right to the 
    city* <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764433>
    Leila Whitley. March 2018.
    | Full Text 
    <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118764433> | Full 
    Text (PDF) <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2056305118764433> |