Paper short abstract:

This paper examines dwelling practices of Moroccan nationals who reside and work in the Turkish metropolis Istanbul. Based on fieldwork in the Turkish megacity, the ethnographic investigation aims to better understand the role of mooring in a digital age.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the settlement strategies of Moroccan middle-class professionals who arrived in Istanbul in recent years. Since the free trade agreement between Turkey and Morocco in 2006, increasing numbers of Moroccan nationals have moved to the Turkish megacity. Relocating to interstices in the polycentric agglomeration, Moroccan middle-class residents of Istanbul bore testimony to the rise of digital technologies in the megacity connecting Asian and European markets. The main purpose of this paper is to more comprehensively understand the intertwining of mooring in a new urban environment and digital connectedness with transnational networks. Based on long-term fieldwork combining in-depth interviews with participant observation, the case of Moroccan residents of Istanbul provides much-needed insights into the social dynamics inherent in dwelling in a digital age. The study critically examines how Moroccan nationals residing in Istanbul make sense of their uses of digital media in their homes. The ethnographic analysis of their digital practices at home is set in the context of their professional trajectories and personal strategies for making a living in Istanbul. Moroccan nationals reported that they often lead a life between sustained interactions on social media platforms and involvement in their local neighbourhoods. Switching between digital and physical spheres, they experience face-to-face and mediated communication situations on a day-to-day basis. Grounded in the ethnographic evidence collected in Istanbul, the paper suggests avenues for exploring homing practices and lifeworlds of members of the Moroccan diaspora.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the Digital Normads' work- and lifestyle. It asks for motives, pictures, ideologies and social processes of power standing behind the decision for such a work- and lifestyle, as well as for interdependencies with the structural changes of the labor market.

Paper long abstract:

Digital Transformation and globalization lead in some fields to a worldwide power shift from nation states to global markets and in digital spaces. New business models like Airbnb, Uber or Crowdworking undermine governmental labor market regulations and social security systems. Concerned politicians, economists and scientists are warning of a growing number of day laborers and demanding for more state regulation, while many of the parties concerned call for deregulation.

This trend becomes particularly clear when looking at Digital Nomads, self-employed, entrepreneurs or employees, mostly from the academic sector, who generate their income using digital technologies and lead or aim at a location-independent lifestyle. They stand for the rater glamorous, self-determined and flexible labor force in the knowledge-intensive service sector. But in their daily working-life they are also confronted with precarious working conditions. It is important to note that Digital Nomadism is a medial construction and an attribution as well as a self-description and a model for some of the knowledge workers. Practices often follow the discourse and the pictures in the media, and vice versa. Due to these interdependencies, I follow a traditional ethnographical approach and investigate the macro level as well as the micro level.

Explaining the raise of flexible forms of work only with the structural changes of the labor market would neglect the self-determined decisions of the actors. The active struggling for and the idealization of flexible work only becomes explainable when also looking at the impact of ideological pictures and discourses about freedom.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines practices of keeping in touch between Italian professional migrants and their friends and family. Practices draw on and reconstruct kin and friend norms through political economies of control and choice that develop/disrupt relationships and life course/migrant trajectories.

Paper long abstract:

Affluent and skilled forms of migration are often linked to characterizations of contemporary social relations as highly reflexive, nomadic and individualized. Skilled migration is said, in part, to derive from, and is constitutive of, the market driven dissolution of moral forms of togetherness that generate fleeting and disposable personal relationships. This paper aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of scholarship that views personal relationships through a lens of flux and flow by examining the digital and physical practices of keeping in touch between Italian professional migrants in London and their friends and family living abroad.

In contrast to previous research that prioritizes either physical or digital mobilities, this study places both physical and digital practices of keeping in touch on equal ground. The paper finds that the availability of ICTs and low-cost air generate trans-local political economies of control and choice rooted in normative kinship and friendship structures. Through these political economies expectations/desires for both proximity and distance are constructed that in turn develop/disrupt relationships, migration trajectories, as well as the life course trajectories of friends and family. Instead of dissolving, many relationships are in fact strengthened through a co-constituted mobile ethics of self/other relations that align and situate imaginations trans-locally. In addition, contrary to the thesis of a marketization of relationships, tourism and leisure can become key means through which care practices are enacted. Other relationships, however, can struggle to adapt, contributing to a potential fossilization of relationships where loved ones remain important yet become mostly inactive.