From Refugee to Citizen: Rhizomes and Roots in the Digital Age

This study examines digital media as platforms for current and former refugees to reaffirm and create themselves and to learn to be American. To think of refugees as “uprooted” with “roots that threaten to wither” (Malkki 1992, 32) is misguided. This study utilizes Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the rhizome (1987) to rethink current and former refugee experiences postresettlement in the US. With the rising ubiquity of digital media and digital technologies, increasing numbers of refugees resettle with smartphones and other technologies. These technologies provide current and former refugees opportunities to maintain hybridized self-conceptions and to feel they are both “here” and “there.