Advancement of technologies and finances accelerated the movement of information, communication and transportation across nations. In many ways, international migration is strongly influenced by the emergence of a global information society and by the broad availability of information and communication technologies. Once settled in the country of residence, for many migrants, internet, telephone and television are significant tools allowing them to stay in touch with their countries of origin, or even to facilitate the establishment of new ties between the country of residence and that of origin. Migrants today are often able to lead ‘dual lives’, to maintain close relations, material, and emotional affiliations with both their country of origin and their country of destination. However, there are limitations to the globalization of information, large reliance on internet and telephone would disengage the immigrants from its local environment.
Appadurai argues that in many social locations throughout the world, especially those characterized by media saturation and migrant population, “The mass communication facilitate ‘works of imagination,’ in which imaged worlds and imagined selves can created within diasporic communities, both in local contexts and across national boundaries.”[1] The cyberspace serves as means of providing a sense of aspiration and hope to placeless migrant populations. The online spaces provide a sense of comfort for immigrants to express themselves in ways that they would not feel comfortable doing in their physical context. Internet can serve as a democratic space of dialogue and response with multiple perspectives. This allows immigrants to seek each other out who share the same histories and practices. Internet could also allow all kinds of information and news to travel simultaneously over the world. With the internet connection, substantial number of migrants started to subscribe TV programs provided by the most popular TV channels in their homeland. By subscribing the internet programs, they can watch the news, entertainment, and television drama from their homeland at their convenience. Instant message software such as Yahoo Massager, MSN, Skype…etc are essential to the migrants to stay in touch with their friends and family at all times.
Globalization of information allows the migrants to experience a duality between place of origin and place of residence. “The new immigrant identity is hybridized, interweaving elements of the homeland and new land. Migrants therefore exist in a world of “in-betweeness,” negotiating cultural forms and identities at the crossroads of the nation-state and global diasporas.”[2] Contemporary immigrants are usually deeply rooted in their country of origin. Due to the displacement of their physical location, those migrants often feel out of place and helpless. Internet and telephone are the only sources to keep them away from nostalgia. Regular usage of internet induces the dependence of it. Migrants incline to consume more and more time in front of computer and telephone thus isolate themselves from the physical world. Danah Boyd’s research has shown that Internet usage weaken the ties among physical world friends, families while deepen the ties among distanced people. This fact totally defeats the purpose of immigration, which is to seek for a better living and working environment in other parts of the world. This new phenomenon brought by information globalization is reflected as” loss of social capital” as migrants spent their time transfixed by screens rather than other people around them. Internet is considered to broaden the social network; however, it shrinks the social network among migrants and natives. Danah Boyd’s research has also shown that substantive usage of internet causes social isolation and depression. Internet use at home has a strong negative impact on time spent with friends and family as well as time spent on social activities.
As information globalization raises all the benefits to our society today, it also brings down the level of physical interaction among people. Daily association with homeland strengthens the strong ties the migrants use to have, but weakens, or even cuts, the weak ties in the new society they are in. In some cases, it leads to “bounded solidarity”, when cliques become so turned in on themselves that they all but stop interacting with the wider society around them.
[1] Srinivasan and Ryati, Diasporic Information Environments: Re-Framing Immigrant-Focused Information Research” P. 4
[2] Srinivasan and Ryati, Diasporic Information Environments: Re-Framing Immigrant-Focused Information Research”P.5
