Paper short abstract:

This paper wants to discuss how the use of smartphones and social media do change continuities and ruptures in the home-making processes of refugees in Kenya and Germany and what home means in a constantly multi-belonging and digitally connected state of being.

Paper long abstract:

The global distribution and appropriation of mobile phones, the internet and Social Media has had a significant impact on migration. Mobile phones and the internet are not only auxiliary tools during migration, but function as omnipresent companions and bridge the distances for people on the move. They are "migrant essentials" which create new "media cultures of migration". In contrast to the time before the digital age, these "connected" or "virtual migrants" are characterised by the fact that they carry their transnational social networks with them and through the virtual bonds create a social space of connected presence and multi-belonging (Diminescu 2008). Social Media do offer new spaces of home-making and belonging which holds especially true for people living at the margins in liminal, in-between or stuck-in spaces in displacement.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, with the example of people living in the Kakuma refugee camp in North-Western Kenya and African refugees in Trier, Germany, I want to examine how mobile phones and Social Media have changed the notion of home and belonging as well as the inherent continuities and ruptures. I want to analyse, how people on the move or in stuck-in places through engaging in transnational networking and communication enact home-making and belonging and create a home even if the host government officially rejects them. In this way, I want to show which role mobile phones and Social Media play for identity construction, future making and the creation of alternative homes in the virtual space.