Mediated absent presence in forced displacement

ABSTRACT

For many forcefully displaced people worldwide, notions around one’s sense of “home” and “place” in the world are perpetually unsettled. This article explores how digital technologies interact with embodied, material experiences within the geographical location refugees are residing in. Empirical examples from ethnographic research conducted among Iraqi urban refugees, living in prolonged uncertainty in Jordan, shows how situated experiences of legal, material, and social uncertainty reinforce particular mediated socialities. Pivotal studies have shown how digital connections engender virtual home-making practices and a wide variety of connected presences. This study points to the other side of the same coin: the cultivation of “absent presence.” “Absent presence” refers to feelings—the ambivalence that experiences of prolonged displacement bring about—but also to active disengagement and affective tactics in response. These engender a further separation from the physical world where forced migrants are not deemed welcome.

Acknowledgments

I express my gratitude to the people hailing from Iraq who have contributed to this study, for sharing their lives and stories with me. I thank Professor Leah Bassel and Professor Helen Wood for their ongoing support during my PhD trajectory. I am grateful to Dr. Jonathan Corpus Ong and Dr. Maria Rovisco for this opportunity to publish among great scholars and very thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their very constructive remarks. Finally, I thank Domenique Sherab, Zoë Jordan, and Kevin Best for proofreading. Any remaining shortcomings are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ See Lenner and Turner (2018) for a comprehensive critique on the willingness to incorporate (only) Syrian refugees into Jordan’s labor market.