Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement - Hardcover

Brinkerhoff, Jennifer M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521517842 ISBN 13: 9780521517843

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

In the first full-length scholarly study of the increasingly important phenomenon of digital diasporas, Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff examines how immigrants who still feel a connection to their country of origin use the internet. She argues that digital diasporas can ease security concerns in both the homeland and the host society, improve diaspora members' quality of life in the host society, and contribute to socio-economic development in the homeland. Drawing on case studies of nine digital diaspora organizations, Brinkerhoff's research supplies new empirical material regarding digital diasporas and their potential security and development impacts. She also explores their impact on identity negotiation, arguing that digital diasporas create communities and organizations that represent hybrid identities and encourage solidarity, identity, and material benefits among their members. The book also explores these communities' implications for policy and practice.

About this title

Review:

"...Brinkerhoff offers us the first thorough comparative study of diaspora groups on the Internet, allowing her to identify a number of important cross-cutting themes and findings...Brinkerhoff draws a number of important insights from her thorough analysis of online interactions, pointing out, for example, the ways in which members of religious minorities often persecuted in the homeland can, from the liberating position of diaspora and through the anonymity afforded by the Internet, openly claim an identity an identity previously denied to them (p. 65)."
Perspectives on Politics, Peter Mandaville, George Mason University

Book Description:

In the first full-length scholarly study of digital diasporas, Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff argues that digital diasporas can ease security concerns in both the homeland and the host society, improve diaspora members' quality of life in the host society, and contribute to socio-economic development in the homeland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0521517842
• ISBN 13: 9780521517843
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288