Smartphones as Personal Digital Archives? Recentring Migrant Authority as Curating and Storytelling Subjects

Smartphones as Personal Digital Archives? Recentring Migrant Authority as Curating and Storytelling Subjects

Personal Archives

This article explores the smartphone as a complex tool in the context of forced migration. The article explains how smartphones not only follow migrants but also document their journey through digital objects in times of conflict, displacement, and resettlement. The authors view smartphones as personal digital archives, where migrants curate their own narratives on their own portable devices. These archives can offer insights into the migrant experience and serve as records of forced migration. Drawing from fieldwork spanning five sites over five years, the article examines how personal digital archives capture and reflect migration's symbolic, affective, and material dimensions. By centering their analysis on these archives, the authors emphasize migrants' authority as witnesses to their own stories, challenging mainstream Western journalism's tendency to oversimplify migrant narratives.

Georgiou, Myra
Leurs, Koen

SAGE Publications

2022-03

Katherine Weiss

Journal article

DOI: 10.1177/14648849211060629

Georgiou, Myria, and Koen Leurs. “Smartphones as Personal Digital Archives? Recentring Migrant Authority as Curating and Storytelling Subjects.” Journalism (London, England), vol. 23, no. 3, 2022, pp. 668–89, https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211060629.