ABSTRACT
Digital migration studies have considerably broadened our understanding of how information and communications technologies (ICTs) have enhanced the “online migrants”‘(Nedelcu, 2009) ability to act across national borders as transnationally “connected” (Diminescu, 2005; Leurs & Ponzanesi, 2018), “co-present” (Baldassar et al., 2016), “smart refugees” (Dekker et al., 2018) or “digital diasporas” (Nedelcu, 2018). Furthermore, the “exceptional attention” (Leurs & Smets, 2018) given to forced migrants’ digitally mediated practices highlights the key role of mobile technologies and social media in empowering refugees and undocumented migrants in their everyday struggle against precarity and exclusion (Nedelcu & Soysüren, 2022). Yet, although existing scholarship has concentrated on digital technologies’ agentic dimension with regard to mobile and dispersed populations living transnational lives, as well as mobilizations of diasporas, the micro-fabric of digital (transnational) agency is still being overlooked. In-depth studies, varying researchers’ positionalities, disciplines, and analysis of specific populations are needed in order to develop a greater understanding of how people “make a difference” (Giddens, 1984, p. 14) by using ICTs to act across borders.
