African Migration in the Age of Surveillance and Digital Belonging
摘要
African migrants are active in global digital labour (de Haas, 2008), becoming e-migrants. Under pressure to survive arising from poverty, conflict and disease, they become available for multiple opportunities (IOM & AUC, 2023), if not in the physical places of their countries of residence, then in virtual spaces. The new virtual spaces emerged because of the increased sophistication of technologies for generating and sharing information at speeds comparable to the speed of light (Yoo et al., 2016). Through the digital spaces, distances have shrunk, while the pain of the demerits of absence has dissolved. To what extent has this impacted their lives? Are there any more angles to this development? This will all feature in this chapter.