"In this comparative article we offer a critical overview of the articles included in this Special Issue, paying attention to common patterns and distinctive features. We do so by exploring the ways in which Somali migrant women living across different cities in Europe engage in everyday digital pra ... ctices. The central question that underlines this comparative investigation is how transnational multisitedness, different generations and urban localities play a role in contemporary Somali diasporic formations and take shape through digital media. We consider the multi-sitedness of Somali diaspora in light of the emergent transnational potentials of communications technologies, while keeping in focus gendered dynamics and intersectional aspects; how generation plays into processes of diasporic cultural change and continuity; and how spatial relationships of belonging are shaped by the communicative spaces that mobile devices and software platforms afford. Our findings show that to better understand the role of digitally mediated experiences, we need to focus on everyday media environments within contexts of international mobility across continental borders marked by postcolonial traces." (Abstract) more

"This editorial introduces the theoretical framework, methodological approach and comparative themes of the Special Issue on 'Somali Diaspora and Digital Practices: Gender, Media and Belonging'. The Special Issue proposes to connect the notion of the Somali diaspora to recent advancements in communi ... cation technologies, exploring the ways in which the Somali, specifically Somali women, keep in touch locally, nationally and transnationally through different forms of everyday digital practices. In particular for Somali migrant women, the use of digital media is highly embedded in their gendered roles as mothers, daughters, reunited wives, students and professionals, who keep the ties with the homeland and diaspora communities in diversified as well as collective ways. The close analysis of empirical findings across different sites in Europe shows multi-sitedness, generation and urban belonging as central features. These issues emerge as findings from a large ethnographic fieldwork carried out across European cities (Amsterdam, London and Rome).1 Ethnography offers an essential contribution in understanding social media practices as situated in specific social, geographical and political contexts, taking into account the intersectional dynamic of factors including gender, race, ethnicity, generation, religion and sexual orientation." (Abstract) more

"This essay revisits the notion of diaspora in connection with recent advancements in communication technologies, which have led to the formation of 'digital diasporas'. The focus is on digital migrants as 'connected users', and therefore as participants in social media platforms. Though there is no ... consensus on what digital diaspora means exactly because it depends on its many disciplinary takes and media-specific variations, such as 'e-diasporas', 'digital diasporas', 'net-diasporas' and 'web-diasporas', there is consensus on the profound ways in which digital connectivity has transformed privileged terms of spatiality, belonging and self-identification. Digital diasporas provide new possible cartographies to map the self in relation to increasingly complex patterns of globalization and localization, while avoiding closures and the negative effects of identity politics. Furthermore, it allows different scripts to be envisioned for the politics of emotion that is essential to the understanding of the motives, nature and impact of the migrant experience, as well as the possibility for negotiating multiple belongings. The essay reviews some of the disciplinary or media-specific takes that have emerged from science and technology studies, media, communication studies and migration studies, anthropology and sociology. Offering a postcolonial intervention into this interdisciplinary field, the essay analyses 'digital diaspora' as a relational term that operates on three levels - Internet-specific, network-oriented and embedded in wider social practices - while also accounting for political, geographical and historical specificities." (Abstract) more

"This collection of essays foregrounds the work of filmmakers in theorizing and comparing postcolonial conditions, recasting debates in both cinema and postcolonial studies. Postcolonial cinema is presented, not as a rigid category, but as an optic through which to address questions of postcolonial ... historiography, geography, subjectivity, and epistemology. Current circumstances of migration and immigration, militarization, economic exploitation, racial and religious conflict, enactments of citizenship, and cultural self-representation have deep roots in colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial histories. Contributors deeply engage the tense asymmetries bequeathed to the contemporary world by the multiple, diverse, and overlapping histories of European, Soviet, U.S., and multi-national imperial ventures. With interdisciplinary expertise, they discover and explore the conceptual temporalities and spatialities of postcoloniality, with an emphasis on the politics of form, the 'postcolonial aesthetics' through which filmmakers challenge themselves and their viewers to move beyond national and imperial imaginaries." (Publisher description) more