Digital Migration

Koen Leurs is an Associate Professor in Gender, Media and Migration Studies at the Graduate Gender Program of the Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Leurs is a digital migration studies scholar interested in digital practices of migrants and digital governmentality of migration. He combines mixed methods with creative, participatory and digital approaches. He is PI in the project ‘Co-Designing a Fair Digital Asylum System’ (2022–2023). He was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Previously, he chaired the ‘Diaspora, Migration and the Media’ section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA, 2016-2021). Recently, Leurs co-edited the Handbook of media and migration (Sage, 2020) and special issues on ‘Cultures of (im)mobile entanglements’ for the International Journal of Cultural Studies (2023), ‘Digital migration practices and the everyday’ for Communication, Culture & Critique and ‘Inclusive media literacy education for diverse societies’ for  Media and Communication (2022). His previous monograph is Digital passages. Diaspora, gender and youth cultural intersections (Amsterdam University Press, 2015).

• Chapter 1: InfrastructuresChapter 2: ConnectionsChapter 3: RepresentationsChapter 4: Affects and emotionsChapter 5: Histories

Leurs offers an insightful account of the complex but important relationship between migration and digitisation, drawing out the key parameters of digital migration studies. The rich material and conversations informing the book challenge disciplinary silos and demonstrate why it matters to study migration and digitisation together. This is a relationship that we need to explore in its many dimensions if we are to understand how states, people but also technologies shape crossborder mobility, its imaginings, controls and practices. The book offers precisely that holistic perspective. A must read for everyone who is concerned with questions of human mobility, media and communications and the digital border.