ABSTRACT
In our contemporary world, migration and digital technologies mutually shape one another. They have historically always been intertwined, yet their dynamic relationship is constantly evolving. People on the move mediate their being and belonging in increasing conditions of datafication and digitization. Mobile devices, social media platforms and smartphone apps are used to shape the transnationally connected, and locally situated, social worlds in which migrants live their everyday lives. Connecting with friends, peers and family, sharing memories and information, navigating spaces and reshaping the local and the global in the process illustrate the proliferation of migration-related digital practices. These digital intensifications and accelerations also constitute a Janus-faced development for mobile people as they face increased forms of datafied migration management, algorithmic surveillance, control and biometric classification as well as forms of transnational authoritarianism and networked repression. In this anthology, Doing Digital Migration Studies, we bring into focus, empirically trace and theorize the myriad everyday digital practices surrounding migration.
