Social media and migration: Virtual community 2.0

Research indicates that migrants' social media usage in Ireland enables a background awareness of friends and acquaintances that supports bonding capital and transnational communities in ways not previously reported. Interview data from sixty-five Polish and Filipino non-nationals in Ireland provides evidence that their social media practices enable a shared experience with friends and relations living outside Ireland that is not simply an elaboration of the social relations enabled by earlier Internet applications. Social media usage enables a passive monitoring of others, through the circulation of voice, video, text, and pictures, that maintains a low level mutual awareness and supports a dispersed community of affinity. This ambient, or background, awareness of others enhances and supports dispersed communities by contributing to bonding capital. This may lead to significant changes in the process of migration by slowing down the process of integration and participation in host societies while also encouraging continual movement of migrants from one society to another. Introduction Changes in communication and interaction between people, the exchange of goods, services and information amongst people, and the movement of people from one locality to another have often been discussed in the context of emergent information and communication technologies. Are recent social media developments (e.g., social networking applications such as Facebook and Friendster, Twitter, Linkedin, and so on) responsible for further social transformation? Debates about the social effect of new social media technologies have special relevance for migrants since, as dislocated individuals who have grown up in one society and now live or work elsewhere, changes in communication technologies are likely to have a significant effect on their lives. Evidence from numerous studies indicates that new social media enhance migrants' capacities to maintain family and kinship contacts across long distances, to create extensive personal networks, and to participate in the national debates of their home societies through transnational associations. There has been less evidence regarding the effect of social media on links between migrants and the communities in which they grew up. To what extent do new technologies enable migrants to participate in the communities that they have left, so as to remain part of that home community? This article reports on the social media practices of non-nationals in Ireland. The research explored the effect of these practices on long distance relations of affinity and community by interviewing over 65 Polish and Filipino non-nationals currently resident in Ireland over a period of two …