Localizing Digital Diasporas : Diasporic digital networking among Somali, Romanian and Turkish women in Rome through the lens of social class.

This dissertation investigates the diasporic digital practices of Somali, Romanian and Turkish migrant women living in Rome with a particular focus on the interrelation with social class dynamics and forms of social stratification from a gender perspective. My intervention aims at showing how looking at digital practices from an intersectional and local perspective that is sensitive to social class dynamics provides a vantage point for understanding the emergence and articulation of specific forms of digitally-led diasporic sociality on a local level. This study intervenes in the scholarly field of digital diaspora studies by offering a different and critical perspective on how to approach, epistemologically and methodologically, the study of diasporic subjects’ networking, which is enhanced by the use of digital media. My epistemological approach to the study of digital diasporas is influenced by feminist and postcolonial theories on migration and diaspora studies and sensitive to the analysis of contextual power dynamics as they act within the field of diaspora space. I show, indeed, how contextual power relations – and migrants’ positioning in relation to them – are implicated along the online–offline continuum in the process of migrants’ identity formation and community-making and in the articulation of a sense of belonging in a context of displacement. In addition, my critical approach to the study of digital diasporas is enriched by Bourdieu’s theory of ‘social field’ and ‘capitals’, which led me to address digital diaspora not as a category of analysis but rather as a ‘field’ – as a domain of social practice. The conceptualization of digital diaspora as a ‘field’ helps me to untangle the impact that diasporic subjects’ resources – in terms of symbolical, cultural, social and economic capitals – and their ability to mobilize these resources have on digital diasporic sociality. Moreover, I look at the role that diasporic subjects’ social class positioning has in the emergence of specific forms of digital practices while I also investigate how these practices interrelate with these subjects’ local dynamics of social stratification within diasporic communities. This study wants to disengage from the study of digital diasporas as especially relevant to investigate diasporic transnational connectivity by showing how transnational and local digital practices for diasporic networking strongly impact on local diasporic dynamics. This focus makes me privilege a grounded, small-scale perspective in the analysis of different ‘fields’ of digital diaspora as they emerge from Somali, Romanian and Turkish women’s accounts. Moreover, this local dimension in investigating digital diasporic sociality brings to the fore the role of Rome as a ‘quasi-global city’ in how it shapes the context in which migrant women act and experience their online and offline relationships