Media and migration through the lens of mediatization and transnationalism (original) (raw)
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Media and Migration through the Lens of Mediatization and Transnationalism 1
In present paper, the debates around mediatization and transnationalism constitute the backdrop for a discussion on the media and communication practices among Swedish expatriates in the Netherlands and forced migrants from Bosnia in Sweden. The complex relationship between (transnational) identity, place and mobility is studied at three intersections between media and migration: (1) creativity and connection-making, (2) The boundaries of mediated freedom and (3) the transnational production of locality. The paper stresses the importance of a contextual and non-media-centric perspective (see ; it is in agents' daily activities -where media practices and social practices are interwoven with each other -the interplay between processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization take place.
Mediatized Migrants: Media Cultures and Communicative Networking in the Diaspora
In this chapter we want to develop a different perspective on media and migration. It is specifically not our intention to make any rash statements on the role of certain media in the 'integration' of 'ethnic minorities' into 'national host societies' (cf. for this discussion . Rather, we want to formulate some considerations on how we can capture, on the one hand, the multidimensionality of diasporic media cultures (an approach that is typical in present media ethnography) without forgetting, on the other hand, that there are typical patterns of media appropriation across migrant groups. The foundation for this is an empirical study on the media appropriation and communicative connectivity of the Moroccan, Russian and Turkish diaspora in Germany. Based on this study we have developed the concept of 'mediatized migrants'. This concept argues that we must understand the present culture of migrants as media cultures, because we are now only able to comprehend them in the context of media communication. In this sense, migrants are nowadays mediatized; that means that their articulation of a migrant identity is deeply interwoven with and molded by different forms of media. However, the diasporic media cultures of mediatized migrants remain highly
Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen, 2022
In an article about the semiotic of the food parcel that Romanian mums send their children when they are away, the anthropologist Vintilă Mihăilescu wrote that the food ‘from home’ ‘is not from the marketplace, it is not even “as grandma makes it” or “as Mum makes it at home”, it is from Mum. It is Mum.’ (2018, our translation, added emphases), thus stressing the fact that it has the capacity to instantly recreate affective bonds across space. This chapter looks into the symbolic construction in alternative media of transnational forms of identification and connection that are developed and sustained through mobility and home/place-making practices, permeated with affect and emotion. Our exploratory analysis examines a video reportage by the Romanian online publication, Recorder, starting from the hypothesis that it offers viewers specific semiotic resources for interpretation, identity building in transnational contexts and engagement in the transnational social field. Titled ‘Diaspora la pachet’/‘Diaspora in a parcel’1 (Udișteanu and Muntean, 2019), the video reportage, released on 28 December 2019, follows en route Christmas food parcels sent by families in Romanian villages to their migrant members in London and Coventry, parcels that are carriers of affects, emotions and memories of the home(land). It enjoyed popularity on social media2 (most prominently on Facebook and YouTube), reaching both diasporic and non-diasporic publics, and being widely circulated in the context of the family-centred winter holiday season. We aim to bring out the characteristic ways in which an alternative media publication attempts to grant visibility to ordinary migrant and non-migrant actors engaged in regular mobilities and emotion-ridden interactions within transnational families and communities. Our points of reference for comparison are findings on the construction of Romanian intra-EU migration as a public problem (Beciu et al., 2018), which reveal an instrumentalization of the diaspora in mainstream media and political discourse. Reified identity categories (the ‘diaspora’, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Romanian migrants, the ‘heroes’ and the ‘slaves’/‘victims’) have thus been strategically used by public actors to formulate stances and claims regarding other issues (such as Romania’s country image), to mobilize, or to reposition Romania as an EU member-state in a transnational field of power relations (Beciu et al., 2018). As shown by Beciu and Lazăr (2016), the mainstream media representations of the migrants’ mobilities are well integrated into such discursive mechanisms, resulting into visibility patterns of mobility geographies, processes and identities that are essentialized, dramatized, and instrumentalized. The ensuing repertoire, they conclude, ‘circumvents the ways in which these actors foster meaningful relationships and roles’ in the transnational social field (Beciu and Lazăr, 2016: 54). Our working hypothesis is that, as an alternative media publication, the Recorder seeks to capture for its publics the ‘meaningful relationships and roles’ that migrants develop across borders in relation to their families and communities in the localities of origin and destination. We regard the verbal and visual representations in the video reportage as semiotic resources that diasporic and non-diasporic publics could use to interpret transnational migration phenomena and spaces, as well as to negotiate their identities and belongings to transnational communities (Georgiou, 2006). Within this frame, a special focus will be on emotion in relation to the migrants’ subjective engagement, an under-researched area in transnational migration studies (Boccagni and Baldassar, 2015). Our chapter will give insights into the distinct alternative media construction and performance of mobility practices that connect migrants and non-migrants in transnational contexts. We begin by conceptualizing transnational identity and relationship building through the lens of practices of home-/place-making, emotions and mobilities.
Media in Motion: Cultural Complexity and Migration in the Nordic Region
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2012
years in the country, have created a family, and are raising Hebrew-speaking children in the Israeli school. Kalir proposes here a concept of general utility, which is valuable for the analysis of the specific case that he investigates. I think of the concept of 'practical belonging'. He means by this that individuals may adopt ways of life and norms of behavior which they draw from the prevailing culture, reacting to the practical problems of daily life in the manner which they perceive as the rule for the main stream. In other words, they behave in public as if they belonged to the society, even though they are not citizens and, in many cases, even not officially recognized as residents. To be sure, this model is not unique to Latin Americans in Israel. We remember, for instance, Israelis' diasporas in the United States, England, or France, or Eastern Europeans' in Western Europe, Canada, or Australia. There also, one finds people who have not yet gained the right of permanent residence in the country, let alone citizenship, but who tend to behave like the people who belong to the main stream and who are perceived by them as 'the' American, 'the' British, 'the' French, or 'the' Australian. This strategy may work to some extent, as far as the opposition to the influx of 'foreigners' into society is not determined on the side of politicians or some segments of the population. The merit of this conceptualization is to break away with the dichotomy exclusionÁ inclusion that is often used in the study of migrant collectives; it shows that in-between possibilities may come up and request new paradigms. Although, I still see one important weakness in Kalir's analysis. This weakness concerns, in my view, the confusion between acculturation and assimilation. When, indeed, one speaks of assimilation to the Jewish majority without considering the issue of religious allegiance, one misses a major aspect of the Israeli reality. Jews in Israel see themselves as the only society in the world where Jewishness is a national identity that is linkedÁin a variety of possible waysÁto religious and cultural principles. Most Jews in Israel are secular but rare are those who rebuke that to become a Jew for a non-Jew requests going through religious conversionÁof one kind or another. As far as Latinos, instead, create Christian churches to emphasize their moral virtues, they do gain respect on the side of the Jewish population but, still, can only hope to achieve acculturation to the main stream but not assimilation. Readers of this book who keep this distinction in mind would be able to get aware of a most interesting example of migrant population in this era of globalization when every case teaches about all others but still remains peculiar.
Media, Migration, and Sociology A Critical Review
The article reviews and discusses the interconnections between media studies and migration studies – namely, the field of “media and migration” – focusing in particular on three major books which were published in the last five years: two in the sub-field of journalism, political communication and (im)migration [Moore, Gross & Threadgold’s 2012 edited Migration and the Media, published by Peter Lang, and Benson’s 2013 Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison, published by Cambridge University Press], and one in the sub-field of transnationalism, diasporas and the media [Hegde’s 2016 Mediating Migration, published by Polity Press]. By looking at these interconnections, the article identifies and critically examines major subfields of studies and research in media and migration, it discusses their strengths and weaknesses, and it suggests a few potential research strands with the intention of both reinforcing the sociological contribution to the field and better bridging migration studies and media studies.
Contemporary media help construct diasporic identities From 2009-2010, post-docs Jasmijn van Gorp and Louise Mueller carried out a pilot-study on media use among migrants from Ghana now living in the Bijlmer and from the former Yugoslavia (refugee women) as part of the research project Media and Diaspora. They discovered that contemporary media, from television to photo and film, to social-networking sites, played an important role in shaping the identities of both communities but also that there were significant differences between them. A summary of their report is available through our website. This project will also lead to an exhibition and a seminar: "Media, Visibility and Diasporas in The Netherlands," in co-operation with Imagine IC, Amsterdam, scheduled for September 2011.
Sandra Ponzanesi, 2019
This article charts new directions in digital media and migration studies from a gendered, postcolonial, and multidisciplinary perspective. In particular, the focus is on the ways in which the experience of displacement is resignified and transformed by new digital affordances from different vantage points, engaging with recent developments in datafication, visualization, biometric technologies, platformization, securitization, and extended reality (XR) as part of a drastically changed global mediascape. This article explores the role of new media technologies in rethinking the dynamics of migration and globalization by focusing in particular on the role of migrant users as "connected" and active participants, as well as "screened" and subject to biometric datafication, visualization, and surveillance. Elaborating on concepts such as "migration" and "mobility," the article analyzes some of the paradoxes offered by our globalized world of intermittent connectivity and troubled belonging, seen as relational definitions that are always fluid, negotiable, and porous. This special issue with the ambitious title "Migration and Mobility in a Digital Age: (Re)mapping Connectivity and Belonging" aims to bring about a dialogue between migration and digital technologies to resignify the experience of displacement as transformed by the affordances of new media technologies.