Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

The paper investigates the dual character of ICT in the context of forced migration in places of forced immobility. In doing so, the authors understand the dual character of ICT, on the one hand, as a medium and technique for opening, border crossing and connection across borders and, on the other hand, as a technique of control and restriction. As such, the paper combines the personal importance of the online connectivity for refugees in places of forced immobility with regimes of mobility some of which restrict this only possibility and discursively problematize it, while others even criminalize it. The project is based on a qualitative research approach and combines an analysis of concrete measures and practices (action level) with structural conditions and measures, as well as with discourses, which have an impact on measures, practices and structures and partly produce them. The results provide evidence that refugees and asylum seekers actively shape their emplacement processes by using connectivity as an important tool for learning the language, for overcoming a state of boredom, for orientation in a new environment and for information. Hence, connectivity widely compensates for the spaces of action, spaces of learning, spaces of interaction and spaces for information that are missing offline, in the process of emplacing themselves in a new environment. Thus, the results reveal that both Internet access and experiences of transnationalism/displacement constitute and configure connectivity.