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Abstract

Recently, the relationship between migration and information and communication technologies (ICTs) has become one of the key fields of migration scholarship. The widespread use of mobile devices, messaging applications, and social media has significantly transformed the ways in which social ties are maintained across spatial and temporal distances, making communication almost continuous and instantaneous. In this context, it is particularly important to analyse the role of ICT-mediated communication in the creation of ethno-migrant communities, including digital diasporas as a new form of sociality.

In the academic literature, the phenomenon of digital diasporas and platform mediated communication is discussed as both a theoretical and a practical issue. On the one hand, it allows for a rethinking of classical understandings of diasporas, community boundaries, and mechanisms of solidarity by illustrating how online communities contribute to the creation, maintenance, and reproduction of diasporic ties. On the other hand, such communities play a practical role in migrants’ everyday lives by providing access to information, mutual assistance, and economic and social resources. Their impact, however, is ambivalent, as digital diasporas may both facilitate adaptation in the host society and reinforce closure within migrants’ own networks.

In the proposed presentation, I examine the role of online communities, specifically group chats on WhatsApp and Telegram, in the formation and reproduction of diasporas and migrant infrustructure, using the case of migrants from Central Asian countries in Russia. The empirical basis consists of in-depth interviews conducted in 2023–2024. The qualitative analysis shows that group chats on messaging platforms constitute a key infrastructure of both digital and offline diasporas. The study identifies several types of such communities, including former classmates’ chats, hometown-based (zemlyachestvo) chats, chats organised by diasporic and ethno-cultural associations, professional and workplace groups, “noticeboard” chats, financial mutual-aid groups (known as chёрnaya kassa), informal friendship-based chats, as well as family chats.

The characteristics of these communities, patterns of communication within them, and their functions will be examined. Preliminary results suggest that these online communities play a crucial role in maintaining social ties, mobilising mutual assistance, and coordinating everyday practices in migration, thereby shaping dense translocal and transnational networks.