Smartphones As Micro-Homes, Away from Home? Comparing Forms of Portable and Digital Homemaking Among Migrants and Displaced Young People

Mobile and smart phones are part and parcel of everyday lives for asylum seekers, refugee settlers and migrants in all sorts of housing, legal and economic circumstances. While empirical research on the use, meanings and implications of mobile phones is in constant expansion, this session aims to facilitate a deeper understanding of their sociological relevance in three respects: as biographically and socio-culturally embedded technologies, as ‘material agents’ in themselves, and, more fundamentally, as critical tools for homemaking. In this session we invite reflections on the important role of mobile and smart phones in shaping experiences of people on the move. For example, for young people from refugee backgrounds and asylum seekers experiencing protracted waiting, mobile phones operate as affordances for homemaking and even as proxies of home For migrants and refugees, mobile and smartphones allow people to visualize different worlds and nourish imaginaries of alternative and better futures – without necessarily having the means, resources and opportunities to pursue them. Smartphones and social media enable frequent and cheap contact with people living elsewhere, which may facilitate forms of mutual care and shared life projects, as much as conflicts and mutual control. Smartphones store images, videos and texts that constitute a portable archive of meaningful memories. Smartphones, by their very existence and use, may contribute to fill apparently empty timespaces, while being also a resource for interaction with majority societies. Our session invites empirical contributions on smartphones as portable homes in a comparative and politically relevant perspective.