Smartphones: Digital Infrastructures of the Displaced

Abstract

Under the heading of digital migration studies, scholars from various disciplines have started to explore the roles of smartphones in the lives of displaced migrants. Smartphones are material, portable, embodied, and affective artefacts. Leurs and Patterson, through unpacking smartphones as infrastructures, assess the various meanings, roles, and usages smartphones may play in the lives of displaced migrants. The chapter focuses on three emergent perspectives in research on smartphones in the context of displaced migration: as part of infrastructures of (1) survival and surveillance, (2) transnational communication and emotion management, and (3) digital self-representation. In describing these three themes, the authors are attentive to highlighting the dialectic of structure and agency, subordination and empowerment.