Ambivalent Technologies: Everyday Life and Digital Practices in the Matamoros Refugee Camp

Digital practices in later life are not yet well understood. Therefore, this paper discusses the framework for a research design project that aims at tracing differences and similarities in how older adults use their smartphones in circumstances in and outside their homes in Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada. The research questions of this international research project focus on the extent to which digital mobile practices relate to perceived social connectedness among older adults aged 55–79 years old. While studies have shown that the subjective experience of ‘being connected’ supports continued wellbeing in later life, there remains an insufficient understanding of the processes through which digital mediated social interaction is effective for social connectedness. The analytical framework of the project prioritizes the co-constituency of (digital) technology and ageing, and takes digital practices in everyday life as its entry point. The main data collection tool will be the tracking of smartphone activity of 600 older adults (150 per country) during four weeks. An online survey and qualitative interviews will gather data about the meanings of the quantified digital practices, and how they shape (if they do) the participants’ connection to the world. This approach will allow us not only to get insight into what older adults say how they used their smartphone but also to gain insight into their real-life daily use. The assessment of the challenges, strengths, and weaknesses of the methods contributes towards an accurate and appropriate interpretation of empirical results and their implications.

In this chapter, I explore the digital literacy practices of an adult migrant in Sweden, and the digital literacy practices that are part of the curriculum of the Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) programme in which she takes part. The data on which the study is based were collected using an ethnographic methodology, including classroom observations and individual semi-structured interviews with the student and her teacher. Literacy is understood from a social practices perspective; the analysis explores interacting aspects of literacy events and practices. It was found that the learner has limited opportunities to participate in digital literacy practices in her everyday life and that most of these involve social interaction with family and friends. The teacher in the SFI programme encourages her only in limited ways to engage in digital literacy practices, though she and the student do engage in digital literacy practices of a semi-private nature. I suggest that learners’ digital literacy practices can be brought to bear for pedagogical purposes to better connect to the learner’s transnational practices and for the teacher to understand the learner’s entire linguistic repertoire and range of literacies for learning.KeywordsDigital literacyEthnographyLiteracyMigrantsSwedenSwedish

Varieties of digital practices have increasingly become part of people’s everyday lives and people, in general, use these communicative practices on a daily basis, mostly for social and entertaining purposes. As to higher education, researchers have pointed out that digital technology could be a useful tool in how to learn more effectively, if it is based on the abilities that students bring with them into higher education from their everyday life (for example, Buzzard et. al., 2011). In this case study, we explore the issue of students' digital practices in everyday life as well as in higher education, in a teacher training programme at a Swedish University. The aim is two-fold: on the one hand, to provide knowledge regarding students' everyday experiences of digital practices and the ways in which these are utilised in higher education; on the other hand, to contribute to the understanding of the ways in which higher education contributes to challenging and developing students' digital skills. Twenty-nine students from teacher training programmes participated in the study by answering a questionnaire. The results show that the students’ digital habits are not being used or acknowledged in higher education, except for when it comes to their Teacher Training Practice (TTP). Furthermore, the results also show that higher education contributes to students’ digital skills. This, we argue, could be of interest for teachers and researchers in teacher training programmes and for teachers in primary to tertiary education, in developing education activities with digital technology based on pupils’ and students’ digital habits. We can also see that the study can inspire other teachers in higher education, where the idea of using students’ digital habits perhaps is not yet taken into consideration.

This chapter presents the research questions, approaches, and arguments of the book, asking how our everyday lives with media have changed after the smartphone. I introduce the topic of media use in everyday life as an empirical, methodological, and theoretical research interest, and argue for its continued centrality to our digital society today, accentuated by datafication. I discuss how the analytical concepts of media repertories and public connection can inform research into media use in everyday life, and what it means that our societies and user practices are becoming more digital. The main argument of the book is that digital media transform our navigation across the domains of everyday life by blurring boundaries, intensifying dilemmas, and affecting our sense of connection to communities and people around us. The chapter concludes by presenting the structure of the rest of the book, where these arguments will be substantiated in analysis of media use an ordinary day, media use in life phase transitions, and media use when ordinary life is disrupted. Can you remember your first smartphone, and did it change your life? I bought my first smartphone in the early summer of 2011, right before the birth of my first child. I can safely say that life was never the same again. Although the new phone was hardly the most significant change that happened, it became part of how I reconfigured everyday life. My coincidental timing of these events might be a personal particularity, but the early 2010s, only a little more than a decade ago, was a period in which smartphones became part of everyday life for lots of people. This happened in Norway where I live, and in other countries in the Global North, soon followed by broader proliferation worldwide (Avle et al., 2020). In 2021, it was estimated that more than 90 per cent of people had smartphone access in a growing number of countries around the globe (Deloitte, 2021). 'Smartphones changed everything', wrote the Wall Street Journal in 2020: 'smartphones upended every element of society during the last decade, from dating to dinner parties, travel to politics. This is just the beginning' (Kitchen, 9.9.2020). But while all of this was happening, people lived their lives, using smartphones along with other media old and new, interwoven with what was going on in their lives, and in the world around them. This book explores the role of media in our everyday lives in digital societies, after the proliferation of smartphones and in conditions of ubiquitous connectivity. I analyze everyday media use across platforms, content types and modes of communication, taking the perspective of how we live our lives with media -how we manage plans and practicalities, keep in touch with friends and family, seek information and entertainment, work and learn, take part in shared experiences, and connect to our social lifeworlds. We might do all of this in the space of one single day, and we might experience such a day as 'ordinary' -just normal everyday life. But media technologies are also part of our less ordinary days, important to how we manage life-changing transitions and special events in our personal lives, and to how we relate to local communities, political processes or global events. We use media to connect to each other, and to society -throughout an ordinary day, across the life course, and in times of disruption. The smartphone is emblematic of how our everyday lives with media are changing in a digital and hyper-connected society, and as such it is essential to the topic of this book. A central question I discuss is what it means that most of us now have a smartphone to reach for, from where we are and what we are doing, to manage multiple aspects of our daily lives: A mobile, flexible device we rely on to communicate, find information, entertain and assist us, often used in combination with other media, but also a device that enables tracking and surveillance of our movements and engagements, informing feedback loops based on our personal data. How has digital media use in everyday life changed after the smartphone?

Forced migration refers to the forcibly induced movement of people, for example, when migrants are forced to flee to escape conflict or persecution or become trafficked. The definition also encompasses situations of enforced immobility, for example, when displaced people are confined to refugee camps and detention centers. Forced displacement may occur within or across the borders of the nation-state. According to this definition, the effect of the force causing the migratory movement is crucial, and distinguishes forced migrants—who may be termed “refugee,” “trafficked person,” “stateless person,” “asylum seeker,” or “internally displaced persons” (IDPs)—from other migrants such as economic migrants. However, as anthropologists of forced migration illustrate, such distinctions by legal, state, or international organizations are not always relevant outside of institutional logics; when backed up by the force of the state, they can undermine the livelihoods and safety of migrants. The anthropology of forced migration is undertaken by researchers who aim to depict and capture the realities of forced migrants, and to understand the world from the perspective of the forced migrants themselves. The anthropology of forced migration also addresses the historical context that drives the displacement as well as how forced migrants interact with their cultural, social, religious, and economic environments, and how doing so compels cultural change. By virtue of their influence in the lives of forced migrants, anthropologists of forced migration must incorporate the terminologies and classifications of international organizations and states into their analyses, since these terminologies and classifications have tangible effects on the lives of migrants. At the same time, anthropologists of forced migration interrogate these terminologies and classifications. In so doing, they prioritize the perspectives and realities of the forced migrants over external classifications and definitions. Consequently, the anthropology of forced migration is distinguished from other disciplines that also explore forced migration such as international law and some studies in the field of refugee studies and (forced) migration studies. On a theoretical level, an analysis that centers on the experiences, perspectives, and realities of forced migrants enables novel insights into societal processes such as austerity policies, the role of borders in society and the global system, and the work of humanitarian organizations. These policies, societal dynamics, and institutions have tangible and deep effects on the lives of forced migrants. How forced migrants interact with external systems and institutions has raised vital questions on dependency and agency, which anthropologists of forced migration have discussed in their works. Many anthropologists of forced migration also aim to be helpful in improving programs for forced migrants by conveying the perspectives and experiences of forced migrants to policymakers so that such programs are more relevant to the realities of forced migrants. Anthropologists of forced migration have also used art installations and films to convey the experience of forced migration.

Post-displacement livelihoods in mining communities: The politics of precarity and everyday uncertainty in Marange, Zimbabwe

This conclusion summarizes key insights from the former chapters, and highlights political dimensions of media use in digital everyday life. I particularly underline how our more digital everyday lives intensify communicative dilemmas, in which individuals in everyday settings negotiate with societal norms and power structures through their uses of media technologies. I also discuss how everyday media use connects us to different societal spheres and issues, also pointing to global challenges such as the pandemic and the climate crisis, arguing that everyday media use is key to our understandings of society. I discuss how to analyze this in media use research, emphasizing attention to processes of change and disruption.

This chapter examines the US-Mexico border as the site of a contemporary and unprecedented crisis of global immigration. Drawing from recent critical discussions on sovereignty and the state of exception in political theory, it reflects on critical questions of the border in neoliberal times and explores the “bare life” that inhabits it. The chapter reads The Devil’s Highway (2005), Luis Alberto Urrea’s documentary narrative account of a failed expedition across the border in 2001 that killed fourteen migrants. It reads Urrea’s narrative reconstruction of the Wellton 26, a case that remains the single worst migrant death event in Arizona border history, as revealing the existence of a negative territoriality and community of migrants, without which this border ceases to be. It argues that the US-Mexico border, along with the heterogeneous figure of the contemporary migrant itself, disallows any attempt to serve as the ground for any culturally resistant claims.

Postmodern procedural poetry has received quite a bit of attention in the last several years. In her book Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy (2004), Marjorie Perloff devotes a chapter to the ...

In this thematic issue of <em>Media and Communication</em> titled Practices of Digital In- and Exclusion in Everyday Life, we bring together insights from around the world to offer a diverse set of perspectives on digital practices and digital literacies across the lifespan. Moreover, emphasizing the development of digital literacies as a situated social practice, this thematic issue provides insights into the social contexts through which people develop digital literacy practices, how they construct and integrate social norms around technologies, and the links between digital literacies and (digital) citizenship. As concerns about digital in- and exclusion grow, this thematic issue hosts numerous relevant studies by academics that collectively help us gain insight into the impact of digital in- and exclusion in everyday life across the lifespan, gaining insight into the role of different contextual factors, including time, place, and social, economic, and political contexts in the ways in which citizens use digital media and develop digital literacies.

This paper employs an abolitionist framework to understand direct-action humanitarian aid along the US-Mexico border. Focusing on my own experiences volunteering with No More Deaths, an organization providing critical aid along the US-Mexico border, I think through the role of care in the work and its abolitionist dimensions. I consider how micropractices of care, for migrants and between aid workers, open onto a larger project of dismantling logics of racialized criminalization that structure the production of disavowable life in border enforcement. The production of disavowable, migrant life is produced through a process I call, building off the work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, strategic abandonment, a calculus of value wherein minoritized communities are rendered unworthy of care or protection by virtue of a racialized, criminal status. Strategic abandonment is a central tactic of neoliberal governance regarding immigration and is employed with deadly force to police the border. No More Deaths’ project of care becomes an abolitionist project in that it abolishes hierarchies of human value and the logics of criminalization and strategic abandonment that produce the crisis of migrant death along the border. Focusing specifically on volunteer experiences, I think through the ways in which care functions to “dismantle, change, and build” these structuring logics at the border, as the abolitionist CRio Publishing Collective puts it. I propose that care, in its practices and positionalities, is a central means of imagining and instating new modes of recognition, inclusion, and the understanding of migration in the shadow of neoliberalism.

This article explores the role of migrant photo portraiture for life imaging by providing a close reading of two photobooks by contemporary photographer Fazal Sheikh – A Sense of Common Ground (1996) and The Victor Weeps. Afghanistan (1998). Visual storytelling is a core feature of this social and humanitarian photographer’s work, through which two main questions are addressed: how are real-life migration experiences as survival stories and personal biographies inscribed in the portraits of refugees and migrants? Which form(at)s of portraits are chosen, and which practices of portrayal are employed for the purpose of documenting migrant lives? Based on Jean-Luc Nancy’s portrait theory and Giorgio Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’, the author introduces a process-analytical category of the ‘migrant/refugee portrait’ in order to grasp the complex (de-)figuration processes connected with the sociopolitical issues of human displacement. In Sheikh’s long-term portrayal of migrant/refugee communities and his concept of relational portraiture, she recognizes an effective documentary photo practice for de-othering and demigrantizing the portrait of the migrant as a stereotypical representation of the ‘other’.

Sociologists of everyday life have regenerated the notion of everyday with creative potential, especially after the 1970s. The ability to make the familiar unfamiliar has posited everyday life studies with multifaceted realities which can embrace the human situation of emancipation and oppression. The mundane reality of everyday life practices is freighted with power and resistance. Therefore, everyday life practices have to be scrutinized as they have become a site upon which agency is situated. In this sense, the sphere of everyday life can be regarded as a space of exploitation and liberation at the same time. The power relations in everyday life practices conceptualize the notion in a contested manner; thus, resistance. The present paper will analyze the everyday life practices of housewives in the suburb of London to discover the resistance and the possibility of emancipation narrated in the novel Arlington Park (2006) written by Rachel Cusk. The analysis here is based on Henri Lefebvre’s theorization of the notion in a dialectical manner, suggesting that it can be both oppressive and liberative. Discovering the potential everyday holds for the housewives accentuates the value of domestic labor in transforming the female actors. In this sense, Michel de Certeau’s celebration of everyday as a sphere of resistance will be taken into account in analyzing the resistant activities of the housewives in the abovementioned novel. This paper proposes the possibility of emancipation for the housewives who carry out their everyday practices by situating the notion of everyday as a mediator space.

As digital media have become increasingly integrated in everyday life, there have been calls for new literacies to become an integral part of language and literacy education. Yet traditional approaches to digital technologies, which position technology as an occasional add-on to existing pedagogies, continue to persist in Australian school settings. The role of teachers and their approaches to digital technologies have been acknowledged in efforts to explain the challenges associated with teaching and learning new literacies. However, little is known about what shapes their encounters with digital technologies beyond institutional constraints. The research reported in this thesis aimed to address this gap. The study was informed by the body of work known as Literacy Studies which conceptualises literacy as a social practice and emphasises the close and complex relationships between literacy practices, technology, socio-cultural contexts, identities, beliefs and values. The study investigated language and literacy teachers’ everyday digital literacy practices to help explain why teaching and learning new literacies in school settings continues to represent a challenge. It focused on teachers’ ways of thinking about digital technologies: how they are constructed, and how they shape their experiences. Detailed accounts of teachers’ digital literacy practices promised to highlight what encourages and what constrains their engagement with new literacies in their everyday lives. Located within the theory and practice of qualitative inquiry, the research employed a case study approach, focusing on five language and literacy teachers working in Melbourne, Australia, who volunteered to participate. The four female teachers and one male teacher ranged in age from 31 to 53. The data sources included demographic profiles with background information about the participants, participant-generated digital photographs of their everyday practices with technologies, individual interviews and online observations over a period of two to three months in social networking spaces including professional blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Data analysis involved two intertwined approaches: visual data analysis and thematic analysis. The study found that the participants’ digital literacy practices ranged from the traditional, resembling conventional literacies performed in a more technologised way, to the ‘new’, which were multimodal, participatory, collaborative, creative and hybrid in character. The combination of traditional and new was identified across all the cases with some practices more dominant than others. The participants’ traditional literacy practices supported their everyday lives effectively, while the new literacy practices provided them with opportunities for engaging in new experiences and constructing new identities and relationships. Notably, in the context of their everyday practices, three of the five participants engaged in informal professional learning online through Personal Learning Networks (PLNs), a form of learning that was participant-driven, active, communication-based and participatory. The participants’ digital mindsets shaped their digital literacy practices. These mindsets comprised beliefs associated with everyday life and understandings of the opportunities offered and supported by technologies, that is, their affordances. Their mindsets were constructed under the influence of local contexts but also of the broader global context in which digital technologies are designed and produced. The practices associated with new literacies required creative, elaborated and critical assumptions about what was possible in digital environments. However, thinking about technologies in terms of their affordances was challenging for some of the participants: their capacity to conceptualise the possibilities provided by technologies and the critical awareness required to scrutinise the opportunities and risks associated with them varied. Importantly, all the participants were reluctant to scrutinise their dominant ways of thinking about digital technologies. The study contributes to the field of Literacy Studies by offering an explanation of why teaching new literacies continues to be challenging. It concludes that teachers’ digital mindsets shape their encounters with digital technologies in important ways. As some teachers may experience difficulties with conceptualising new literacies, it is time to re-think in-service and pre-service teachers’ professional learning and education in regard to digital technologies. Teachers need opportunities and support to reflect on their everyday digital literacy practices and digital mindsets and to consider critically the implications for teaching new literacies.

Building Online Academic Community: Reputation Work on Twitter