Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CONNECTINGEUROPE (Digital Crossings in Europe: Gender, Diaspora and Belonging)
Teaser
CONNECTINGEUROPE aims to investigate the relationship between migration and digital technologies. How does the ‘connected migrant’ contribute to new forms of European integration and cosmopolitan citizenship? The project explores digital diasporas in relation to issues of...
Summary
CONNECTINGEUROPE aims to investigate the relationship between migration and digital technologies. How does the ‘connected migrant’ contribute to new forms of European integration and cosmopolitan citizenship? The project explores digital diasporas in relation to issues of gender, ethnicity and affective belonging, focusing on how new technologies enhance new forms of connectivity between the homeland and destination countries, but also across diasporas.
Drawing from the humanities and social sciences, the project combines media and communication studies with gender and postcolonial studies, providing a qualitative approach to the emerging field of critical data studies, while also contributing to the development of postcolonial digital humanities. To this end, the project has developed a mixed methodology that combines digital methods for data visualization and network analysis with virtual ethnography, in-depth interviews and discourse analysis. The goal is to make user-generated digital footprints across applications emerge as hybridized and heterogeneous forms of participation that change the way we understand and account for social inclusion, gender emancipation, intercultural identities and the idea of Europe itself, through the study of digital everyday practices.
This project takes the activities, choices and interventions of migrant women as the starting point by providing alternative points of view that would otherwise be lost in the public domain.
Work performed
\"During the first period of activities, CONNECTINGEUROPE has focused on the study of digital practices by migrant women (aged 18-40) who have settled in Europe’s main cities (PhD1: London, PhD2: Amsterdam, PhD3: Rome), in dialogue with family and loved ones they have left behind (postdoc: Somalia, Romania, Turkey). This has included training in digital methods and ethnographic media practices along with the setting up of a new mixed method approach.
This has been achieved through a combination of online digital methods and ethnographic fieldwork. This has generated an innovative methodology that has been foundational for the fieldwork period in the respective sites.
The focus on female migrant diasporas from Somalia, Turkey and Romania living in Europe’s main metropolitan centres (London, Amsterdam and Rome) has produced significant insights into: 1) the different patterns of gender migration and integration in Europe (colonial, labour, post-socialist); 2) the shifts in state multicultural policies and reception strategies; 3) the dynamic of major migrant urban settings as cosmopolitan hubs where difference and conviviality are often grafted onto each other.
fieldwork:
PhD1 (London) 60 interviews have been done, 20 per group. For PhD2 Amsterdam 50 interviews have been conducted (18 Romanian, 17 Turkish, 15 Somali). For PhD3 (Rome) 42 interviews have been conducted + several follow up interviews (18 Romanian, 14 Somali, 10 Turkish). This surpassed the original plan of interviewing just 40 women per city, thanks to the organization of a preliminary pilot period (Spring 2017) and a full year devoted to fieldwork in the respective sites (Sept 2017-Sept 2018) which has allowed to achieve extra results with our mixed-method approach.
The postdoc has focused on the politics of home and has completed the first two \'homeland\' sites such as Istanbul (total of 15 interviews including returnees between Amsterdam and the Turkish capital) and Bucharest, including fieldwork in more rural areas outside the capital with higher presence of Roma people (total interviews 20).
dissemination:
In December 2016 the PI co-organized a KNAW (The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) Academy Colloquium & Masterclass on ‘Connected Migrants: Encapsulation or Cosmopolitanism?’ (Amsterdam, 14-16 December 2016) which consisted of three special masterclasses and the presentation of work by prominent digital media scholars. Besides the academic colloquium we organized short video interviews with several key-speakers who talk about their trajectory, work and interventions into the field of digital media and migrations. The clips can also be found online: http://connectingeuropeproject.eu/category/media/
The team has presented at several international conferences and venues (ECREA, Prague, 2016; Hong Kong, 2017; ICA San Diego, 2017; Columbia University, 2018, Tokyo, 2018; Ecrea, Lugano, 2018) and has published a common methodological article “Diaspora and Mapping Methodologies. Tracing transnational digital Connections with ‘Mattering Maps’\"\" in the peer reviewed journal \'Global Networks. A Journal of Transnational Affair\', Issue 19 (1): (January 2019). Online first 23 May, 2018 (co-edited by Donya Alinejad, Laura Candidatu, Melis Mevsimler, Claudia Minchilli, Sandra Ponzanesi and Fernando van der Vlist). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/glob.12197
During her visiting professorship at Columbia University the PI has organized a large international conference on: ‘Migration and Mobility in a Digital Age. Paradoxes of Connectivity and Belonging’ on April 10-11, 2018, Columbia University, Heyman Center for the Humanities, USA. The conference was structured in 7 panels and brought together more than 25 international scholars who have been working at the intersection of media and migration for many years from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. Keynote speakers: were Arjun Appadurai (New York Univers\"
Final results
The project is generating innovative results at an empirical level (large-scale comparative data collection, both online and offline), methodological level (integration of digital methods and ethnographic fieldwork) and conceptual level (new theorization of digital diasporas and politics of emotions).
The intersection of the different levels leads to a new understanding of Postcolonial Europe as a multidirectional site, where cosmopolitan belonging is also realized through virtual connectivity.
Website & more info
More info: http://connectingeuropeproject.eu/.