Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Online Migrants

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten

Abstract

Online migrants – as a symbiosis between homo mobilis and homo numericus – embody social transformations which are the result of unprecedented interconnectedness within mobile, cosmopolitanized social worlds.

Based on empirical qualitative research conducted on Romanian migrants over the last fifteen years, this chapter demonstrates that information and communication technologies (ICTs) facilitate the co-presence of mobile actors in multiple locations, enable new forms of intergenerational solidarities within transnational families and enhance new connected ways of mobilization and cohesion at a distance. However, migrants’ ICT-mediated transnational practices present contrasting functions. ICTs can allow migrants to develop a sense of multiple belongings and to incorporate cosmopolitan values, while they also make it possible to uphold particular values and claim a specific cultural belonging while living anywhere in the world. This dialogical reality challenges migration theories with regard to a ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in migration studies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    These studies used qualitative methodologies, combining semi-structured interviews, netnography of virtual groups and webographic analysis. For more details, see for instance Nedelcu (2009a, 2009b, 2010, 2012) and Nedelcu and Wyss (2016).

  2. 2.

    Here dialogical relate to logics based on complementary, contradictory, and even opposing principles, which “are not simply juxtaposed, but actually necessary to one another” (Morin 1990, p. 99).

  3. 3.

    For a detailed analysis of this case study see Nedelcu (2009b).

  4. 4.

    In fact, only those scholars with relevant scientific activity at international level (i.e. having published in ISI indexed scientific journals) can figure in the Who’s Who database. The 2015 edition gathers 1.579 scholars, more than half of them residing in Romania.

  5. 5.

    In December 2015, the NGO Ad-Astra counted 68 members, from which only half were resident in the country of origin.

References

  • Alonso, Andoni and Pedro Oiarzabal (eds.). 2010. Diasporas in the new media age. Identity, politics, and community. Reno: University of Nevada Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amar, Georges. 2010. Homo mobilis. Le nouvel âge de la mobilité, éloge de la reliance. Limoges: FYP Editions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amelina, Anna, and Thomas Faist. 2012. De-naturalizing the national in research methodologies: Key concepts of transnational studies in migration. Ethnic and Racial Studies 35(10): 1–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, Ulrich, and Nathan Sznaider. 2010. Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: A research agenda. The British Journal of Sociology 61: 381–403.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, Ulrich. 2006. Qu’est-ce que le cosmopolitisme. Paris: Aubier [Orig.: Der kosmopolitische Blick oder: Krieg ist Frieden, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2004].

    Google Scholar 

  • Brinkerhoff, Jennifer. 2009. Digital diasporas. Identity and transnational engagement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Castells, Manuel. 1996. The information age: Economy, society and culture. 1: The rise of the network society. Cambridge, MA/Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahinden, Janine. 2016. A plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of research on migration and integration. Ethnic and Racial Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1124129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diminescu, Dana. 2005. Le migrant connecté. Pour un manifeste épistémologique. Migrations Société 17(102): 275–292.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doueihi, Milad. 2008. La grande conversion numérique. Paris: Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koslowski, Rey. 2005. International migration and globalization of domestic politics. A conceptual framework. In International migration and globalization of domestic politics, Hrsg. Rey Koslowski, 5–32. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Georgiou, Myria. 2005. Mapping diasporic media cultures: A transnational cultural approach to exclusion. In Media, technology and everyday life in Europe: From information to communication, Hrsg. Roger Silverstone, 33–53. Aldershot: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mattelart, Tristan. 2009. Les diasporas à l’heure des technologies de l’information et de la communication: petit état des savoirs. TIC et société 3(1–2): 11–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madianou, Mirca, and Daniel Miller. 2012. Migration and new media. Transnational families and polymedia. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitra, Ananda, and Eric Watts. 2002. Theorizing cyberspace: The idea of voice applied to the Internet discourse. New Media Society 4: 479–498.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morin, Edgar. 1990. Introduction à la pensée complexe. Paris: ESF.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nedelcu, Mihaela. 2009a. Le migrant online: nouveaux modèles migratoires à 1’ère du numérique. Paris: L’Harmattan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nedelcu, Mihaela. 2009b. Du brain drain à l’e-diaspora: vers une nouvelle culture du lien à l’ère du numérique? TIC et société 3(1–2): 151–173.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nedelcu, Mihaela. 2010. (Re)penser le transnationalisme et l’intégration à l’ère du numérique. Vers un tournant cosmopolitique dans l’étude des migrations internationales? Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales (REMI) 26(2): 33–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nedelcu, Mihaela. 2012. Migrants’ new transnational habitus: rethinking migration through a cosmopolitan lens in the digital age. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38(9): 1339–1356.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nedelcu, Mihaela, and Malika Wyss. 2016. ‘Doing family’ through ICT-mediated ordinary co-presence: Transnational communication practices of Romanian migrants in Switzerland. Global Networks 16(2): 202–218.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, Roland. 1994. Globalisation or glocalization? Journal of International Communication 1(1): 33–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sayad, Abdelmalek. 1999. La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré. Paris: Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheffer, Gabriel. 2003. Diaspora politics. At home abroad. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning A 38: 207–226.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waldinger, Roger. 2003. The 21st century: An entirely new story. In Reinventing the melting pot: Will today’s immigrants become Americans? Hrsg. Tamar Jacoby, 75–85. New York: Basic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vertovec, Steven. 2009. Transnationalism. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wimmer, Andreas, and Nina Glick-Schiller. 2002. Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks 24: 301–334.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de sociologie, Université de Nauchâtel, Neuchâtel, Schweiz

    Mihaela Nedelcu

Authors
  1. Mihaela Nedelcu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mihaela Nedelcu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. TU Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany

    Heidrun Friese

  2. TU Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany

    Marcus Nolden

  3. TU Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany

    Gala Rebane

  4. TU Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany

    Miriam Schreiter

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Nedelcu, M. (2020). Online Migrants. In: Friese, H., Nolden, M., Rebane, G., Schreiter, M. (eds) Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-08357-1_35

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-08357-1_35

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-658-08356-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-658-08357-1

  • eBook Packages: Social Science and Law (German Language)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation