ABSTRACT
The smartphone has transformed everyday life around the world, and the changes have taken place in different ways, for reasons of economy, social organisation, network types, political regimes, scale, cultural values and the life-world situation in which actors find themselves. To refugees, the smartphone is an essential tool, to the extent that it has virtually become a cliché to point out that recent arrivals crave charging power and Wi-Fi more than food and water. About 86% of the Syrian refugee households in Lebanon have mobile phones, whereas an additional 6% have access to one. We may thus assume that most people embarking on the perilous journey, with its many dead ends, dangers, frustrations and privations, have smartphones. Even the poorest refugees generally have access to a mobile phone. This chapter traces smartphone use during the migration process, with an emphasis on its implications for temporality, speed, slowness and waiting. People who are the victims of enforced displacement have a use pattern which differs from that prevalent in more stable and affluent settings. The focus is on three aspects of smartphone use: Location, micro-coordination and networking.
