ICT and geographies of British Arab and Arab American activism |
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Authors: | CAROLINE NAGEL LYNN STAEHELI |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Callcott, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. cnagel@mailbox.sc.edu;2. School of Geosciences, Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK. lynn.staeheli@ed.ac.uk |
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Abstract: | Current literature on migrant transnationalism highlights the role of new information and communication technologies (ICT) in facilitating lives that are situated simultaneously ‘here’ and ‘there’. Yet discussions of transnationalism and ICT obscure many complexities because of the tendency to focus on migrants' connections with ‘homeland’. In this article, we consider more broadly the spatiality of migrant activism and the different ways that ICT enters into it. Drawing on interviews conducted with Arab American and British Arab activists, we ask where is migrant activism geographically situated? How might their use of ICT factor into, or not factor into, activists' activities? In considering our respondents' diverse forms of activism, the multitude of aims and geographical orientations underpinning their activism, and their highly variable use of ICT, this article provides a variegated understanding of migrants' political subjectivities that avoids privileging any single geographical scale or location. |
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Keywords: | TRANSNATIONALISM BRITISH ARABS ARAB AMERICANS MIGRANT ACTIVISM ICT |
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