International Journal of Cultural Studies, Volume 26, Issue 6, Page 655-671, November 2023.
Examining Denmark as a case study, and focusing on LGBTQ+ asylum seekers in particular, this article investigates migration authorities’ use of online surveillance to assess claims for asylum. Drawing on interviews with migration officers and asylum seekers, the article describes how asylum seekers’ social media and phone content comes to determine whether they are seen as having a ‘genuine’ or a ‘fraudulent’ LGBTQ+ identity. The article further shows how surveillance implicates asylum seekers’ movement and (im)mobility, thereby ‘fixing’ their identities across time, preventing their ephemeral online engagement and, ultimately, affecting the outcome of their asylum claims. It also argues that the utilisation of surveillance technologies (for example, to review porn consumption and dating applications) favours gay (cis) men, while depriving lesbian, bisexual and transgender asylum seekers of opportunities to prove their identity.
Category Archives: SAGE Publications Ltd: International Journal of Cultural Studies:
Filipino migrants in Germany and their diasporic (irony) chronotopes in Facebook
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Volume 26, Issue 6, Page 768-784, November 2023.
This article explores Facebook's role in how Filipino migrants negotiate their diasporic chronotopes, that is, spatio-temporal constructions of their past/homeland and present/hostland. Specifically, focus group and digital ethnographic data with Filipino migrants in Germany are analysed using ethnography and discursive psychology approaches. Findings illustrate how Facebook enables Filipinos to re-enact and challenge past/homeland practices, which in turn help create a more meaningful present/hostland life. Facebook further facilitates the capture of conflicting yet socially consequential chronotopes – or irony chronotopes – that traverse and impact both offline and online dimensions of diaspora relations. Capturing such spatio-temporal interplays in migrant realities through social media provides a nuanced and dialogical view into migrants’ lifeworlds, looks beyond the communication role that social media play therein, and contributes to the digital media and temporal turns in diaspora studies.
This article explores Facebook's role in how Filipino migrants negotiate their diasporic chronotopes, that is, spatio-temporal constructions of their past/homeland and present/hostland. Specifically, focus group and digital ethnographic data with Filipino migrants in Germany are analysed using ethnography and discursive psychology approaches. Findings illustrate how Facebook enables Filipinos to re-enact and challenge past/homeland practices, which in turn help create a more meaningful present/hostland life. Facebook further facilitates the capture of conflicting yet socially consequential chronotopes – or irony chronotopes – that traverse and impact both offline and online dimensions of diaspora relations. Capturing such spatio-temporal interplays in migrant realities through social media provides a nuanced and dialogical view into migrants’ lifeworlds, looks beyond the communication role that social media play therein, and contributes to the digital media and temporal turns in diaspora studies.