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Smartphones: Digital Infrastructures of the Displaced

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The Handbook of Displacement

Abstract

Under the heading of digital migration studies, scholars from various disciplines have started to explore the roles of smartphones in the lives of displaced migrants. Smartphones are material, portable, embodied, and affective artefacts. Leurs and Patterson, through unpacking smartphones as infrastructures, assess the various meanings, roles, and usages smartphones may play in the lives of displaced migrants. The chapter focuses on three emergent perspectives in research on smartphones in the context of displaced migration: as part of infrastructures of (1) survival and surveillance, (2) transnational communication and emotion management, and (3) digital self-representation. In describing these three themes, the authors are attentive to highlighting the dialectic of structure and agency, subordination and empowerment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Gender Programme, Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Koen Leurs & Jeffrey Patterson

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  1. Koen Leurs
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  2. Jeffrey Patterson
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Correspondence to Koen Leurs .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

    Peter Adey , Janet C. Bowstead , Katherine Brickell , Vandana Desai , Mike Dolton  & Alasdair Pinkerton , , , ,  & 

  2. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Ayesha Siddiqi

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Leurs, K., Patterson, J. (2020). Smartphones: Digital Infrastructures of the Displaced. In: Adey, P., et al. The Handbook of Displacement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47178-1_40

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47178-1_40

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-47177-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-47178-1

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