Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0

Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections

Koen Leurs author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Amsterdam University Press

Published:22nd Jun '15

Should be back in stock very soon

Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0 cover

Increasingly, young people live online, with the vast majority of their social and cultural interactions conducted through means other than face-to-face conversation. How does this transition impact the ways in which young migrants understand, negotiate, and perform identity? That's the question taken up by Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0, a ground-breaking analysis of the ways that youth culture online interacts with issues of diaspora, gender, and belonging. Drawing on surveys, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, Koen Leurs builds an interdisciplinary portrait of online youth culture and the spaces it opens up for migrant youth to negotiate power relations and to promote intercultural understanding.

"Readers from different disciplines will definitely find Digital Passages an interesting read, particularly those researchers with a methodological interest in digital humanities and students of social consequences of online behavior." - Rianne Dekker, KWALON, journal for qualitative research

"Koen Leurs' work on Moroccan-Dutch youth in the Netherlands with a focus on their use of new media makes a very important contribution to research on race, ethnicity and diasporas. The work is informed by theories in postcolonial studies, critical geography, migration and transnationalism and gives us a clear look at the everyday use of new technology by these young people while revealing the power hierarchies that shape the production, use and circulation of media made by and for these young people. His methods allow us to see these young people as agents who make decisions in their media use and production. He also shows how anti-immigrant feelings manifested in offline community are reproduced in computer game culture online. Overall the extent, depth and scope of this project makes it a strong contribution to the study of youth cultures in global media contexts." - Radhika Gajjala, Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University

"Nothing else has been published on these topics that can match the rigour and insight of Koen Leurs' innovative book. Neither cheerleader nor nay sayer, he blasts apart every over simple assumption about social media in the everyday life of these marginalised and misunderstood young Dutch people. Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0 will find a broad resonance beyond the Netherlands. It should be read by everybody interested in the power of network technologies that have altered solidarity, place and belonging and are now transforming the meaning of culture itself." - Paul Gilroy, Professor of American and English Literature at King's College London

"This book analyzes data about the everyday digital lives of Moroccan-Dutch youth gathered by a gifted researcher over many years. A rich and complex picture emerges, one that adds substantially to the existing scholarship on xenophobia, youth and social media, and identity. Strikingly interdisciplinary, humane, and fascinating research from a nuanced feminist perspective." - Lisa Nakamura, Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

"His [Leurs] self-reflexive writing style makes content accessible and readers to feel close to the researcher, who in addition to offering solid results also provides an engaging description of the ethical and epistemological decisions made in the research process." - Cecilia Gordano Peile in Communications, European journal of communication research

"Leurs' book should be seen as a benchmark in feminist media studies and in scholarship on diaspora and the digital lives of young people. in particular, the serious exploration of intersec- tionality and incorporation of re exivity make this a strong contribution to feminist research and theory" - Sander de Ridder, Feminist Media Studies

"A very useful tool for researchers, students and policymakers if they wish to get another side of an issue that will concern the European public sphere in the years to come." - Nordic Journal of Migration Research

ISBN: 9789089646408

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

324 pages