Hybrid Migration: An Analysis of the Interconnections Between Migration and Media

Migration is not a new human phenomenon, and neither is the use of communication technologies during mobility. Throughout history, communication technologies have afforded migrants the possibility of contact and interaction with those who are physically distant. Letters, telegraphs, telephones, fax machines, emails, and now instant communication through the use of smartphones with internet connectivity have connected people across time, space, and borders. This dissertation analyzes the various interconnections between human migration and communication technologies by examining the role of the smartphone during the processes of contemporary mobility. By observing the uses, practices, meanings, and rituals of communication that migrants experience while using mobile media technology, I expose how the smartphone shapes and transforms experiences of transnational migration/mobility. The main research goal driving this project is to understand from migrants’ first-hand experiences how communication technologies and human mobility shape one another. By examining the case of Central American migration to the United States and analyzing the socio-technical affordances of the smartphone for migration, this dissertation asks three specific questions: 1) How is the smartphone shaping and transforming the migration experience? 2) Which are the affordances, functions, and place of mobile interfaces and the smartphone during the migratory experience? 3) How do migrants use, embody, imagine, and experience the use of the smartphone during the migration process? To achieve this, I applied hybrid ethnographic methods and conducted 38 in-depth interviews with Central American migrants. This allowed me to understand and unpack the meanings and experiences surrounding the use of media technology and infrastructures in the context of human mobilities. Theoretically, I engaged with the Social Shaping of Technology theory (SST), the Imagined Affordances theory, and the Mobile Interface theory to comprehend the role of the smartphone in the context of migration. The application of this theoretical arrangement allowed me to examine the affordances/uses/meanings of media technology, which are determined by the materiality and design of the smartphone as well as by the users’ experiences, expectations, perceptions, and imagination. My primary conclusion is that the smartphone with internet connectivity has altogether permeated and transformed the three fundamental areas of the migration process: the decision and drive to migrate, the journey itself, and life in the diaspora. Thus, I argue that contemporary migration is a hybrid experience. I claim that current migration is experienced through a combination of material/physical and digital infrastructures that are fluid and under constant reconfiguration. I contribute with the conceptualization of the term “hybrid migration” to describe the experience of an all-encompassing technological permeation of the entire process of human migration. “Hybrid migration” is my contribution to the development of epistemological concepts that can attend to the foundation of a necessary “digital theory of migration.”