Diaspora Basques and Online Social Networks (original) (raw)
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"This paper presents the results of original user-based research regarding the Basque diaspora presence on social network sites (SNSs). It is the first academic investigation on the users of Basque diaspora-association groups on Facebook, the largest SNS on the Web. It focuses on the online and offline dimensions of the Basque institutional diaspora presence on the World Wide Web. By concentrating on the Basque diaspora case, I draw attention to the implications that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have on international migrant diasporas, with particular emphasis on how migrant associations and their members perform in a bid to accomplish their activities and goals. The present work opens new venues for future multi- and interdisciplinary analysis as well as comparative and longitudinal studies that could clearly be of interest to researchers, scholars and students of migration and ICTs."
The Online Social Networks of the Basque Diaspora: Fast Forwarded, 2005–2009
Knowledge Communities, 2011
The chapter examines, through the study of the Basque diaspora case, the institutional presence of migrant diasporic communities on the World Wide Web and the usage over time of various digital platforms such as social network sites. The author explores the establishment of online communities as webs of exchange of information and transfer of knowledge in both the physical and digital worlds.
The Basque Diaspora Webscape: Identity, Nation and Homeland, 1990s-2010s
2013
This book engages questions central to the study of diasporas and digital technologies, by analyzing the Basque case in depth. It is about how one diaspora group, the Basques are using the Internet to preserve its identity and culture. It also examines the way Basques in the diaspora are using the Internet to create online communities and a kind of digital nationalism that links all Basques, whether living in the contemporary homeland or scattered around the world, into a single self-identifying people. The research focuses particularly on the websites created and maintained by Basque social and benevolent organizations in sixteen countries in North and South America, Australia, and Western Europe, prior to the popularization of the so-called Social or Collaborative Web or Web 2.0. That is to say, the book examines the ways these websites represent the organizations of which they are a part, and the ways they depict Basque culture, homeland, nationhood, identity, and political aspirations.
“(Re)loading identity and affective capital online: The case of Diaspora Basques on Facebook
The SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration edited by Kevin Smets, Koen Leurs, Myria Georgiou, Saskia Witteborn, and Radhika Gajjala, 2019
Based on original user–based research on Basque diaspora–association groups on Facebook, this chapter analyses the implications that SNSs have on migrants and their descendants’ identity discourses and identity construction. It explores the concept of affective capital online from transnational and diasporic perspectives. By focusing on the Basque diaspora case, I contribute to research on non–state (ethnonational) diasporas in the digital age and on ICTs use among international migrant diasporas. Particularly, the chapter illustrates how technology enables, reinforces and maintains identity and belonging; and how shrinking–temporal and physical distance technologies, especially SNSs, facilitate the construction of common networked–emotional/affective transnational communities across the planet.
Cartography of the Basque Diaspora Online: Preserving Migrants’ Digital Culture
AEMI Journal, Vol. 9: 22-29, 2011
"This paper aims at presenting an overview of some of the results of my work at the intersection between migration and diaspora studies and Internet and Web studies. My research addresses the potential impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on Basque culture and identity maintenance in the diaspora. It deals with the digital culture created by migrants and their institutions and the need for collecting and preserving it."
Identity Palimpsests: Archiving Ethnicity in the U.S. and Canada, edited by Dominique Daniel and Amalia Levi, 2014
The framework of the chapter lies in the understanding that the movement of people — particularly migrants such as the Basques — and the increasing significance of communication in our quotidian lives – which facilitates the exchange of ideas, information, and knowledge — are two main manifestations of today’s globality. The Internet is the supraterritorial communication per excellence that involves a new kind of social and placeless geography, called cyberspace. This digital space is the new home for many migrants, diasporans, and for their social, cultural, economic, religious and political organizations. If ethnic populations today communicate and create content online, how can this data be efficiently preserved and disseminated? Could we afford taking the risk of loss of digital heritage created by minorities, migrants and the society at large? In this context, how can technology help us to collect, preserve and make our memory, our identity, our history and past accessible to the public? How reliable is this digital memory to preserve our history, in this case our ethnic groups and migrants’ histories?
The impact of the digital media in the relation between the Basque Diaspora and the Basque Country
2019
Introduction The response of this paper is to examine the communication between the Basque Diaspora and the Basque Country and the impacts that digital media have in this field. There have always existed communication between the Basque Country and the Basque communities overseas; nevertheless, until 1994 there was no existing established legal relation between them. Methodology To round out the study, 21 interviews were conducted with members of the Basque Diaspora in the United States and Argentina; responsibles of Basque Digital newspapers; the responsible of the Basque Digital Public Television; the responsible of the only Basque Diasporic Media. Results and conclusions The digitization of the media has contributed to the objectives of Law 8/1994 inasmuch as it offers the diaspora updated information on the Basque Country, but it is limited to a one-way communication. The diaspora opts for social networks for interaction and for institutional information (Basque Government) and the 'diaspora media' to access information about their country of origin and other Basque communities abroad.
Young people, social inclusion and digitalisation, 2021
This chapter looks at the new trends in Spanish youth migration in the context of the global crisis of 2008-14. It deals with the socio demographic profile of these migrants, their migratory projects and their networks of political activism. It is based on a research project, “New emigration from Spain: profiles, mobility strategies, and transnational political activism”, which was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CSO2016-80158-R) and produced as part of a larger research project dealing with the phenomenon of recent Spanish emigration to several European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany and France. In order to clarify the research approach, we first present the theoretical background and literature on which this research is based, then introduce the main concepts within this field of studies and finally present the specific methodology of the research. After this, we look at the data collected in order to find out the mechanisms that would explain the role of virtual communities among Spanish young people who have moved abroad and their role in the interaction of Spaniards living abroad. The conclusion invites the reader to reflect upon the role of digital diasporas as well as to think of the potential social exclusion situations that young people might face in their online interactions.
Basque Diaspora Digital Nationalism: Designing “Banal” Identity
The essay examines the increasing interrelation between migration and information and communication technologies, foucusing on the Basque diaspora case. Communication and new technological devices are quintessential for some of the changes in diasporic identity and its future. Technology is the key concept that relates different diasporas across the globe within a common framework.
Diaspora/migration (social media and politics)
Sage Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics , 2014
Social media provide a particularly fascinating entry-point to explore diasporas because diaspora and digital communication platforms are both characterized by paradoxical processes of space and time compression. The links between the two processes have only received increased attention during the last few years, although the current total number of transnational migrants would amount to a country that would rank among the first ten in size globally. Diasporas online raise questions about the core dynamics of cultural globalization spurred by the developing World Wide Web and transnational migration flows: do they ultimately globally connect or divide humans; enable opinion formation, voice, mobilization and protest or new forms of surveillance and censorship; homogenize and balkanize the Internet or promote diversity; promote democratization or reinstall hierarchies? Evidence for all these processes is emerging and movements in both directions have been observed (Bernal, 2010). This article first provides a definition of the notion of diaspora and outlines historical developments in transnational media use of migrants predating the contemporary use of social media. Subsequently, examples and political implications of social media use of diasporic and migrant populations are charted.