Heike Greschke (Germany )

Updated 22.08.04

“No importa donde estés”? – Exploring social practices of ‘doing migration’ on the Internet and beyond

Abstract:

My presentation is based on data collected in the course of my PhD research that deals with the meaning of the internet for contemporary migration processes. The underlying question regarding the concept of migration deals with the ways of doing migration, rather than to take it for granted as a matter of fact. That is to say to break down migration analytically into the social practices that it constitute. In this respect I argue that the use of distance shrinking communication technologies should be considered as one of the crucial social practices in the scene of migration.

Focusing on the internet usage a basic premise of the study is that social actors of translocal groups remain embedded in different socio-geographical spaces even if they create deterritorialized social spaces by internet communication. In order to understand the emergent modes of constructing social reality in translocal groups it is indispensable to explore the interactions of those different social spaces. Consequently, a multi-sited ethnographic approach for researching the internet usages of migration networks is seen as the most adequate research method.

The focus of the study will be a comparison of two different translocal groups - Mennonites, on the one hand and participants of a Paraguayan online-forum, on the other hand – whose internet usages will be recorded and analyzed. The main goal of the research is to pursue how the social worlds of these two communities are restructured through the specific use of the internet. Therefore the locally and socially embedded interactions (the actors’ life-worlds) will be related to the actors' communicative and imaginative practices on the internet by which joint virtual spaces are created.

In my presentation I will focus on some methodological implications arising out of the translocal constructed field of research. What is to gain by extending the fieldwork on the physical grounded sites? How to relate and analyze the different sites, namely the actors’ practices on the internet, their physical grounded life-worlds and the collective created virtual spaces?

Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Nils Zurawski (all Germany)

Virtual (re)unification? Diasporic culture(s) and their representations on the Russian Internet

Abstract:

Theme / Thesis: Can we suppose, that "life" in the intermediate spaces of the Web characterised by a high density of different communication channels will lead to a synchronisation of the diasporic culture and the home culture, or in other words: to a "virtual (re)unification"? Or do we have to deal, in contrary, with the development of most subtly differentiated sub- and regional cultures?

Lots of emigrants being part of a population which is spread transnationally do not plan to return to their "home countries". Nevertheless (or even the more!), they organise themselves via Internet in communication forums defined by language and cultural tradition and (re)establish a vivid contact to their origins. The Internet thus mirrors the situation of a nation as the Russian, whose members - as a result of at least 4 migration waves during the 20th century - are spread around the globe and cannot be defined with regard only to geographical borders or state frontiers. The specific quality of the Russian Internet as a medium of - supposed - ‚virtual (re)unification' depends on the fact, that a large group of its users live abroad and a hugh amount of information is fed into the Russian segment of the WWW from outside the country. Especially at its beginnings the Russian Internet has largely been "produced" and influenced by Russian emigrants, living mostly in the United States, Israel or Germany.

By an analysis of these processes the complex relationship between migration and the medium Internet can be focused. The idea of "ubiquity" - in a strict sense - opposites (or modifies) the essential problematics of "diaspora" (in its etymological sense of "dispersion") or "emigration". If the Internet really would be "omnipresent" - "everywhere", dispersion theoretically gets invalid, though as lived reality it is still existing. Concerning Russian diasporic and emigration culture and its manifestations on the Internet, indeed, two approaches can be differentiated, which reflect this "clash of ideas":

• the Internet is being interpreted as a medium which guarantees a transmission of cultural ‚data' and information without any "loss", i.e. without regard to time and space and (cultural) boundaries (ubiquity). As an effect Russian culture being separated as a result of the four significant waves of emigration during the 20th century gets reunified;
• the development of an "international Russian culture", which is thoroughly distinct of what happens inside Russia itself (especially in the metropoles Moscow and St. Petersburg), is postulated. The "clash of culture" shifts from the intercultural to the inner cultural level.

Research context(s) / Methodology / Results: The "'ideal' type of a ‚centred' diaspora, orientated towards a continuos relationship to its origins and devoted to a ‚teleology' of return", is no longer relevant for the experiences of "younger" diasporical cultures. The sociologist Ayhan Kaya proposed the term of a "quasi-diaspora", which is no longer strictly bound to a specific, "holy" place and experiences a more nostalgic than existential urge to return to his or her home-country. In addition, the "real world" of the surrounding culture and the remembered or imagined place of "home", are paralleled by a third "place": the medial environment. In consequence we critically review the terminology of ethnology-sociology an the one hand and literary and cultural studies on the other in a interdisciplinary approach. Whether the category of "virtual ethnicity" as a more flexible mode of description to fluid identities in the global networks can be more adequate shall be shown in application to the object of our case-study: the Russian culture and its representations on the Net. Methodologically we rely in our case-study on a combined approach of website-analysis - with special attention to cultural identity performance(s) - and qualitative interviews with the initiators and users of the analysed resources and intend to present first results.

Shyam Tekwani (Singapore)

The Tamil Diaspora, Tamil Militancy, and the Internet

Abstract:

Overseas ethnic diasporas have traditionally formed networks to exchange goods and services, including news and information, with other members of the diaspora. Even before the advent of mass communication technologies and the mass media, members of these diasporas always found ways to communicate with the homeland left behind and to keep abreast of the community in the host country.

However, the spread of the Internet has added significantly to the ability of diasporas to create and sustain such networks. Although these networks have utilised every available mode of communication through the ages to maintain the networks of trade and communication, the Internet is particularly suited to their needs, as it is relatively inexpensive and allows for almost instant, one to one communication. The networked nature of the Internet itself a parallel of the social and economic networks created and sustained by diasporas over centuries, and lends itself easily to its utilisation by diasporic communities.

Virtual diasporas, as many online diasporas are now being defined, are also increasingly combining their efforts with real diasporic groups to accomplish socio-political or other strategic goals. Diasporas are increasingly playing in the political/militant movements in their home countries, through extensive fund-raising activities, and international public relations campaigns and predict that with time, key diasporas would acquire even more influence upon the military balance in their home regions as new technologies enable them to become more involved in supporting the military and/or political campaigns in their home states.

Parallel to the expanding reach of diasporic communities across the Internet is the spread of political and militant activism through the Internet. Today most rebel groups across the political spectrum from Islamic militants to Latin American Marxist rebels and ethno-nationalists representing a slew of ethnic communities use the Internet to further their political and strategic goals. In addition to all the social, cultural and economic networking that the Internet enables, the ongoing communication revolution enables Diasporic communities to have more rapid and visible means of calling attention to issues of interest in their home countries, as well as to correct what are considered misperceptions by outsiders and mobilise political support.

The unique historical and cultural antecedents of diaspora communities, sustainers of the oldest transnational communications network, has them well positioned to take advantage of the information revolution. With the Internet, itself a structure of networks, they are now reaching out to their activist brethren, as much as the activist groups themselves have sought them out in the past for their support and their funds. Militancy and activism in the information era then becomes a matter of merging existing networks, or linking them to form newer, wider networks that are more effective and less penetrable.

Given the globalisation of local resistance movements and the expansion of virtual diasporas and their online linkages, several questions arise. How do diasporic communities use the new communication technologies? How do diasporic communities use the Internet to facilitate their involvement in the politics of homelands they have left behind? How in particular do these communities use the Internet to actively support or counter movements in the country of their origin motivated by ethnic, religious or other political considerations?

Wu Mei, Macao

Re-contextualize Chineseness: the Internet and Chinese diaspora

Abstract:

Manuel Castells sees the present age being shaped by the conflicting trends of globalisation and identity (Castells 1997,1). The process of re-contextualizing identities by deterritorialized individuals and social groups worldwide constitutes one of the distinctive social movements of our time as the systemic, and in many cases, global mobility and displacement of individuals from their original locality have become almost a norm of lifestyle choices. This paper explores the issue of identity negotiation and reconstruction of the Chinese diaspora by investigating discursive communication on the Chinese language Internet, specifically Chinese net forums - one of the most popular online activities in global Chinese societies. In other words, the study looks at how displaced Chinese articulate about their identity and whether there is a process of forming the project identity as in Castells' term.

The ever expanding influences of globalisation have displaced many individuals and communities from their original time-space structures. On the one hand, the current world is being interconnected into a transnational network of restructured capitalism, pervasive consumer markets, a global flow of migrant labour force, penetrating media systems and increasingly homogenous entertainment cultures. On the other hand, there is a widespread surge of multiple and diversified movements to search for identity formations.

The quest to reconstitute meaning of self and changed environment forms the essential part of diasporic experience. Personal dispositions introduce a whole set of different parameters for an individual to re-organize meaning of self-identity and communal principles vis-a-vis the primacy of dominant institutions and identity definitions. In such a new environment, traditional and familiar sources of meaning disarticulate, or lose their hold; influences of new power and representations associated with the changed social and cultural context become overwhelmingly prevailing.

The fact that the struggle or negotiation for meaning of life and self-existence is reconstituted in a disaporic context provides an interesting locus for academic inquiry. First, the primacy of diasporas' identity search centres on the national identity. Second, the identity politics is forged in between the old and new powers of dominant institutions and representations of identity. Finally, this discursive reconstruction is conducted collectively by a globally dispersed group of people in a manner of synchronous and asynchronous communication sustained and mediated by computers, the Internet and the World Wide Web.

The study is set within the theoretic framework of identity building as a process of collective construction and contextualization. Identity is made and meaningful only in a specific social and cultural context. Castles' three forms of identity building, namely the legitimising identity, the resistance identity and the project identity, are used as one of conceptual references. It also follows Castles' argument to theorise the recurrence of Chinese nationalism on the Internet in line with cultural nationalism.

Based in general on a large scale quantitative survey of 18 well-known net forums on the Chinese Internet, the study also includes discourse analysis of the content (in a threaded discussion format) of some selected popular Chinese net forums contributed mainly by overseas Chinese. It also carries an ethnographic survey of the frequent users of two overseas net forums.