Connected Sahrawi refugee diaspora in Spain: Gender, social media and digital transnational gossip

Abstract

While there is increasing scholarly attention given to the impact of digital technologies on forced migration, the points of view and situated experiences of refugees living in the diaspora are understudied. This article addresses Sahrawis refugee diasporas, which have close ties with the Sahrawi political cause. Resulting from the unresolved Western Sahara conflict, Sahrawi forced migrants are at the eye of one of the world’s most protracted refugee situations. While most Sahrawis live in refugee camps in Algeria, some Sahrawis have managed to travel onwards. Social media allows those living elsewhere to maintain connections with contacts living in their original refugee camp. However, Facebook has become a complex environment, particularly for Sahrawi women. Gendered mechanisms of control, such as digital transnational gossip, result in a paradoxical politics of belonging: these women simultaneously desire to keep in touch but do not want to become a subject of gossip. From narratives of Sahrawi young women based in Spain gathered through interviews between 2016 and 2018, as well as a specific Facebook campaign and fan page, the focus is on strategies Sahrawi women develop to avoid and confront digital transnational gossip.

The politics and poetics of migrant narratives

“…However, digital self-representations might also exacerbate internal tensions within migrant communities. Focussing on generational and gendered tensions in the Sahrawi refugee diasporas, Silvia Almenara-Niebla and Carmen Ascanio-Sánchez (2019) in this special issue demonstrate how posting on social media results in young Sahrawi women becoming the target of gendered gossip. To avoid transnational homophobic surveillance and policing, the informants in Alexander Dhoest’s (2019 in this special issue) study – forced migrants with non-normative sexual orientations – prioritize disconnectivity over connectivity.…”

“…The group of actors narrating migration explored in this special issue include diaspora and migrant journalists (Kirk, 2019; Voronova, 2019), government officials and policy makers (Madörin, 2019), migrants and refugees (Dhoest, 2019; Greene, 2019; Løland, 2019), diasporas (Almenara-Niebla and Ascanio-Sánchez, 2019) and social media publics (Bozdağ, 2019). The narration of migration happens through anti-migrant social media memes, visual surveillance, digital fingerprints, asylum interviews, smartphone use, refugee selfies and news accounts.…”

The Digital Mediation of Migration: A Qualitative Thematic Synthesis

“…Several authors argue that digital media and technologies can enable migrants to navigate their journeys to Europe with greater ease and security (Andersson, 2019;Dhoest, 2019;Gillespie et al, 2018;Kutscher & Kreß, 2018;Mandic, 2017;Milivojevic, 2018). The greater connectivity afforded through these mediums facilitates the formation of transnational communities between families, friends and shared sociocultural identities (Alinejad et al, 2019;Almenara-Niebla & Ascanio-Sánchez, 2019;Bayramoğlu & Lünenborg, 2018;Belloni, 2019;Dekker et al, 2016;Dekker & Engbersen, 2014;Dhoest, 2019;Ferra & Nguyen, 2017;Fiedler, 2019;Leurs, 2016;Patterson & Leurs, 2019;Pérez & Salgado, 2018;Tanzanu, 2018;Urchs et al, 2019). As a result, close and long ties can be developed and maintained across territorial boundaries, building transnational networks that are both a product and motor of migration.…”

“…With greater access to information and communication there are higher possibilities of encountering untrustworthy information or connecting to criminal entities such as human smugglers and traffickers via digital channels (Bokert et al, 2018;Dekker & Engbersen, 2014). The impact of social media on migrants may also include increased anxiety and social pressures along social, cultural, economic and political dimensions (Hunter, 2015;Almenara-Niebla & Ascanio-Sánchez, 2019;Belloni, 2019;Dhoest, 2019;Hunter, 2015;Leurs, 2016;Talhouk et al, 2019;Tanzanu, 2018). This may in fact lead to counterintuitive outcomes.…”

Global Perspectives on Social Institutions, Organizations, and Relations: Beyond Universalisms and Internationalisms

“…For example, Billari et al (2019) demonstrate how heterogeneous access to broadband creates a digital divide in achieving desired fertility-revealing insights about social stratifying organizations and institutions. In a similar, gendered global paradigmatic vein, a study of refugee women's engagement with social media yields insights on the paradoxical social relations of empowerment and social sanctioning that occurs for refugee women (Almenara-Niebla and Ascanio- Sánchez 2019). New insights about gendered social organizations and relations are also revealed through a study of an online credit crowdsourcing site (Kuwabara and Thébaud 2017), in which the authors find that a woman's perceived beauty significantly disadvantages them in their quest for access to credit for business purposes.…”