DIGINAUTS - MIGRANTS' DIGITAL PRACTICES IN AND OF THE EUROPEAN BORDER REGIME

Description

Despite the ‘digital turn’ in migration research, there has been a lack of studies focusing on migrants’ usages of information and communications technology (ICT). The interdisciplinary DIGINAUTS project sets out to investigate the digital navigation of migrants on arrival sites and en-route to Europe. The aim is to conceptually synthesize existing insights from Critical Border and Migration Studies, Social Media Studies, European Ethnology and Science and Technology Studies. By employing a set of mixed methods (combining ethnographic and digital approaches), the aim is to investigate how ICT, the digital practices of migrants as well as of aiding organisations and initiatives of the receiving countries intermediate and constitute new sociotechnical networks of community and solidarity, in turn re-enacting migrants as political subjects in/of the European border regime. Three sites have been selected for the ethnographic investigation of migrants’ digital practices: 1) the Greek borderland (with a focus on the islands of Lesvos and Chios and the capital of Athens), 2) the German-Danish border region and 3) the Öresund region between Denmark and Sweden.

Period	24 Oct 2019
Held at	University of Copenhagen, Denmark