Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0: Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections

by Koen Leurs

Overview

Increasingly, young people live online, with the vast majority of their social and cultural interactions conducted through means other than face-to-face conversation. How does this transition impact the ways in which young migrants understand, negotiate, and perform identity? That's the question taken up by Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0, a ground-breaking analysis of the ways that youth culture online interacts with issues of diaspora, gender, and belonging. Drawing on surveys, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, Koen Leurs builds an interdisciplinary portrait of online youth culture and the spaces it opens up for migrant youth to negotiate power relations and to promote intercultural understanding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789089646408
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/22/2015
Series:	MediaMatters , #12
Edition description:	1
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Koen Leurs is Associate Professor of Gender, Media and Migration Studies at the Graduate Gender Programme of the Department of Media and Culture at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Leurs was the principal investigator of the Team Science project Co-Designing a Fair Digital Asylum System, funded by the Universities of the Netherlands Digital Society program and COMMIT, a public-private ICT research community (2022–2023). He chairs the Utrecht University-wide Digital Migration Special Interest Group, part of the Governing the Digital Society focus area. He previously co-edited The Sage Handbook of Media and Migration (Sage, 2020) and the special issues (Im)mobile Entanglements (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2023) and Inclusive Media Education for Diverse Societies (Media & Communication, 2022). His latest book is Digital Migration (Sage, 2023). For more information, see https://www.uu.nl/staff/KHALeurs.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 11

Introduction 13

1 Online/offline space and power relations 16

Digital divides 19

Internet platforms as passages 21

Space invader tactics 23

2 Digital identity performativity 25

Micro-politics 27

Intersectionality 29

Digital identities: Materiality, representation & affectivity 30

3 Moroccan-Dutchness in the context of the Netherlands 33

Deconstructing labels 35

4 The transnational habitus of second-generation migrant youth: From roots to routes 42

5 Hypertextual selves: Digital conviviality 47

6 Structure of the book 48

1 Methodological trajectory 51

1.1 Empiricism versus constructivism 52

1.2 The Wired Up survey 55

Constructing the survey 55

The power of definition 59

Survey sampling and access 60

Conducting the survey 63

Descriptive survey data about digital practices of Moroccan-Dutch youth 64

1.3 In-depth interviews 70

Interview sampling 71

Doing interviews using participatory techniques 75

Refiexivity and power relations 80

Inside and outside school: The dynamics of interview settings 84

Selecting field sites 87

1.4 Virtual ethnography 89

Publicly accessible digital field sites 89

Accessing closed digital field sites 91

1.5 Analyzing informants' narratives 94

Politics of translation 95

Coding 97

Feminist poststructuralist critical discourse analysis 98

1.6 Conclusions 100

2 Voices from the margins on Internet forums 103

2.1 Internet forum participation among Moroccan-Dutch youth 105

Marokko.nl and Chaimanl 106

2.2 Theorizing Internet forums as subaltern counterpublics 110

2.3 Digital multiculturalism: "Not all Moroccans are the same" 117

Hush harbors 120

The carnivalesque 121

Networked power contradictions 123

2.4 Digital "hchouma": Renegotiating gender 126

Daring to break taboos: "I just want to know what 'the real deal' is" 128

2.5 Digital postsecularism: Performing Muslimness 131

Digital reconfigurations of religious authority 134

Voicing Muslimness 135

2.6 Conclusions 138

3 Expanding socio-cultural parameters of action using instant messaging 141

3.1 Moroccan-Dutch youth using instant messaging 144

3.2 Theorizing instant messaging as a way of being in the world 149

3.3 The private backstage 153

Conversational topics 155

Boundary making 156

Unstable boundaries: Risks and opportunities 159

3.4 The more public onstage 163

Display pictures and gender stereotypes 164

Display names and bricolage 165

A funky, informal writing style 169

3.5 Conclusions 171

4 Seines and hypertextual selves on social networking sites

4.1 Moroccan-Dutch youth on Hyves and Facebook 175

Self-profiling attributes 178

Motivations 179

4.2 Theorizing the politics of online social networking sites 181

Templates and user cultures 181

Neoliberal SNS logics 183

Teenager SNS logics 186

4.3 Selfies and the gendered gaze 188

Seifte ideals 188

Meetingthe gaze: Objectification and/or representation 192

Victimization and cautionary measures 193

In-betweenness 196

4.4 Hypertextual selves and the micro-politics of association 197

Cultural self-profiling as fandom 200

Differential networking 207

Cosmopolitan perspectives 208

4.5 Conclusions 212

5 Affective geographies on YouTube 215

5.1 Moroccan-Dutch youth using YouTube 217

The Ummah 218

Fitna 220

5.2 Theorizing the politics of YouTube 223

5.3 Theorizing affective geographies and YouTube use 226

5.4 Rooted belongings: Transnational affectivity 230

5.5 Routed affective belongings across geographies 236

5.6 Conclusions 241

Conclusions 243

1 Transdisciplinary dialogues 245

2 Methodological considerations 249

3 Digital inequality and spatial hierarchies 251

4 Space invader tactics and digital belonging 253

Bibliography 261

Appendix 1 Meet the informants 287

Index 315

Editorial Reviews

"Readers from different disciplines will definitely find Digital Passages an interesting read, particularly those researchers with a methodological interest in digital humanities and students of social consequences of online behavior." - Rianne Dekker, KWALON, journal for qualitative research

"Koen Leurs' work on Moroccan-Dutch youth in the Netherlands with a focus on their use of new media makes a very important contribution to research on race, ethnicity and diasporas. The work is informed by theories in postcolonial studies, critical geography, migration and transnationalism and gives us a clear look at the everyday use of new technology by these young people while revealing the power hierarchies that shape the production, use and circulation of media made by and for these young people. His methods allow us to see these young people as agents who make decisions in their media use and production. He also shows how anti-immigrant feelings manifested in offline community are reproduced in computer game culture online. Overall the extent, depth and scope of this project makes it a strong contribution to the study of youth cultures in global media contexts." - Radhika Gajjala, Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University

"Nothing else has been published on these topics that can match the rigour and insight of Koen Leurs' innovative book. Neither cheerleader nor nay sayer, he blasts apart every over simple assumption about social media in the everyday life of these marginalised and misunderstood young Dutch people. Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0 will find a broad resonance beyond the Netherlands. It should be read by everybody interested in the power of network technologies that have altered solidarity, place and belonging and are now transforming the meaning of culture itself." - Paul Gilroy, Professor of American and English Literature at King's College London

"This book analyzes data about the everyday digital lives of Moroccan-Dutch youth gathered by a gifted researcher over many years. A rich and complex picture emerges, one that adds substantially to the existing scholarship on xenophobia, youth and social media, and identity. Strikingly interdisciplinary, humane, and fascinating research from a nuanced feminist perspective." - Lisa Nakamura, Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

"His [Leurs] self-reflexive writing style makes content accessible and readers to feel close to the researcher, who in addition to offering solid results also provides an engaging description of the ethical and epistemological decisions made in the research process." - Cecilia Gordano Peile in Communications, European journal of communication research

"Leurs' book should be seen as a benchmark in feminist media studies and in scholarship on diaspora and the digital lives of young people. in particular, the serious exploration of intersec- tionality and incorporation of re exivity make this a strong contribution to feminist research and theory" - Sander de Ridder, Feminist Media Studies

"A very useful tool for researchers, students and policymakers if they wish to get another side of an issue that will concern the European public sphere in the years to come." - Nordic Journal of Migration Research

From the Publisher

A compelling and theoretically rigorous examination of diasporas online.

Pramod Nayar