July 1st, Rotterdam,
This week our team’s paper was presented at IMISCOE’s annual conference, on a panel about methodological considerations in digital migration studies. Our paper, ‘Mapping Digital Diaspora: Legacies and Challenges,’ was based on a case study analysis of a Turkish-Dutch diaspora issue that mobilized people through social media. We use it to argue for new methods for tracing diasporic engagement online and related implications for conceptualizing diaspora in contexts of digital media proliferation.
The conference’s Keynote talk by Prof. Saskia Sassen from Columbia University highlighted the systemic economic bases for global migration flows, and raised the urgency of understanding how the economic interests behind developments like climate change, land-grabbing, and urban de-industrialization. She discussed how these shape and intensify new forms of migration and societal outcomes that have yet to be properly conceptualized by scholars and policymakers.