Mediating digital literacies across transnational refugee networks: language and resilience inside and outside Syria

Capstick, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5145-7903 (2024) Mediating digital literacies across transnational refugee networks: language and resilience inside and outside Syria. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. ISSN 1469-9451 doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2024.2432456

Abstract/Summary

The challenges encountered by refugees in resource-low settings has led to increased calls for new approaches to understanding the role of digital literacies in enhancing resilience by building on the experiences of refugees in the Global South. Moreover, there have been repeated calls from within academic circles and the humanitarian sector for more inclusive approaches which de-centre outsider assumptions about refugees’ lived experience. This paper addresses these gaps in the current landscape of migration studies with an account of refugee-led participatory research with a focus on how language as a source of capital is used to enhance resilience across refugee networks when mediating health literacies. Drawing on concepts from critical multilingualism which deconstruct and decentre otherwise privileged language practices, the study illustrates how refugee family members outside Syria mediate complex health literacies as part of their everyday digital literacies for non-refugee members inside Syria, thereby enhancing the resilience of transnational family members across the network. The findings reveal how refugee-led research is best facilitated when refugees’ own language practices are a priority in research design. Working in this way illustrates how research teams negotiate power relations in their research by foregrounding research dynamics and structural hierarchies within interdisciplinary research.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/119759
Identification Number/DOI	10.1080/1369183X.2024.2432456
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Language and Applied Linguistics
Publisher	Taylor & Francis
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