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This article focuses on aspects of belonging the producers of reality TV programmes address in the staging of emotions. Based on interview statements by 12 experts from the field of national and international reality TV format production, we argue as follows: on the one hand, producers in reality TV shows address belonging as a perceived cultural proximity to trans-local meta-narratives of a longing for change, romantic love, competition and victory. The producers associate these trans-local meta-narratives with allegedly universal emotions. On the other hand, the producers address belonging as a perceived cultural proximity to local cultural discourses on beauty ideals and combine these with a specific local cultural performance of emotions. The results show that an emotional repertoire is developed and negotiated in the adaptation process of trans-local formats. It refers to universalistic understanding of emotional display and negotiates specific “feeling rules” accordingly.

This chapter analyses how ethnic transnational identities are manifested and negotiated on the social networking sites used by Latvian migrants. Although migrants as well as other people use various personal media, including Skype, chat apps such as WhatsApp and telephones, social networking sites stand out with the diversity of functions in migrant communication. This includes one-to-one exchanges, group communication and the ability to locate and connect with users who may or may not be familiar offline. We argue that social networking sites and particularly thematic groups on these sites that migrants create and join serve as forums or bulletin boards where they exchange practical information and are able to communicate with other Latvians who live nearby – and that these uses have implications for the communication of identity. The empirical data in the chapter comes from 20 semi-structured interviews with Latvian migrants who live in a variety of countries and were recruited for the study on social networking sites, as well as survey data, all of which were collected within the research project The Emigrant Communities of Latvia: National Identity, Transnational Relations and Diaspora Politics. The results demonstrate that migrant interactions on social networking sites do not necessarily lead to the homogenisation of migrants’ conception of what ‘being a Latvian’ means. The increased ability to maintain associations with diverse online and offline social circles provides a migrant with a variety of identity elements to associate with. As a result, hybrid identities may emerge. A migrant can identify with the host society yet still reject some of its characteristics – and choose Latvian alternatives instead.