This provocation offers a critical approach to investigate the diverse impacts of modern communication technologies on the personal, familial and social lives of migrants. Extending the mobilities lens in the context of digital and transnational communication, it interrogates the possibilities and politics produced by the mediation of both mobilities and stasis as reflected in a migrant’s diverse digital practices.

Drawing from ten years of study on the transnational and digital lives of migrants in Melbourne, it foregrounds the production of everyday, intimate and digitised (in)voluntary (im)mobilities as shaped by an uneven ‘network capital’. To navigate this terrain, migrants utilise digital communication technologies and online platforms to forge personal and social connections in and beyond their host country.

This presentation illuminates the patterns and consequences of mediated (in)voluntary (im)mobilities in a migrant’s life, advancing our understanding of the (im)mobility turn in an increasingly digital and transnational world.

Presenter

Dr Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto, Lecturer in Communication in the School of Communication and Creative Arts (SCCA) at Deakin University.

Dr Cabalquinto is an Honorary Visiting Fellow with the HRC