Return to Cyberia: technology and the social worlds of transnational migrants

Abstract This special issue on ‘Return to Cyberia’ is an attempt to evaluate the contemporary moment of new cultural and social forms influenced by rapidly evolving technologies in their first critical decade. It contains five case studies that highlight the range of transnational experiences ‐ from temporary migrants and refugees to the second generation. The contributors address how and why transnational populations use particular communication technologies and the ways in which these practices are influenced by factors such as generation, history of settlement and dispersal, cultural values, class and access. In addition to addressing a wide variety of study populations, the case studies highlight the variety of available ICTs including email and the Internet, teleconferencing, telephones and mobile phones. Collectively, the articles address issues such as geographic identity and connectivity, different use patterns based on gender and generation, authenticity and representation on the Internet, methodology and the intricacies of interpersonal dynamics across transnational social fields.     

Ambivalent citizenship and extraterritorial voting among Colombians in London and Madrid

In this article, we explore the nature of extraterritorial voting among Colombian migrants in the 2010 elections in London and Madrid. To address the neglected issue of why voter turnout from abroad has been so low, we take into account the views of voters and non‐voters alike to show that, while the external vote privileges the professional and well educated, this does not mean that migrants are not interested in politics back home. Drawing on Bauman (1991), we conceptualize ambivalent citizenship as the paradoxical manner in which, through the external vote, states impose hegemonic notions of citizenship from above, which people embrace in an ambivalent manner from below. We show that the workings of the state make voting a difficult process; they create structural ambivalence for migrants who, even if they practise their citizenship in other ways, exercise individual ambivalence because they find it difficult to engage with a political system back home that they do not trust. The conceptualization of ‘ambivalent citizenship’ therefore encompasses the contradictory complexities inherent in the provision of external voting rights that actively privilege and exclude migrants in mutually constitutive ways.     

‘We took a bath with the chickens’: memories of childhood visits to the homeland by second‐generation Greek and Greek Cypriot ‘returnees’

Drawing on a wider study of 90 second‐generation Greeks and Greek Cypriots who have relocated to their ancestral homeland, in this article we focus on the significance of childhood visits to the homeland. Freedom – how children were allowed to roam free and stay up late – is the key trope of such memories, in contrast with the strict spatio‐temporal parenting they received in the host country. Different, sometimes less pleasant memories, however, emerge when the visits took place during later, teenage years. We explore the connections between childhood visits and adult relocation. Adult returnees find that settlement in the homeland produces a new set of challenges and reactions that differ markedly from childhood experiences and memories. They engage a second narrative trope, nostalgia, reflecting on the loss of the ‘authentic’ nature of the homeland and its customs and values. Instead, they highlight the materialism and xenophobia of Greek and Cypriot society nowadays. However, they see the ‘homeland’ as a safer place in which to raise their own children.