DIGINAUTS: Migrants’ digital practices in/of the European border regime

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 DIGINAUTS project sets out to investigate the digital navigation of migrants on arrival sites and en-route to Europe. 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 for migratory ICT activities 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. It is further a goal in the project to develop an interdisciplinary research approach to the study of migrants’ everyday digital practices in collaboration with ETHOSlab (ITU) combining the fields of Social Media Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Ethnography and Borders and Migration Studies.