[EVENT] Summer Project Grant Presentation

Dr. Katherine McCaffrey and Dr. Maisa Taha are from Montclair State University’s Department of Anthropology. Their presentation is “Multiplied Lives: A First Look into Smart Phone Usage and How Refugees Digitally Navigate Resettlement”

This presentation is based on four weeks of pilot research with Syrian and Iraqi refugee families who were resettled in northern New Jersey within the last one to three years. Our purpose was to examine everyday digital practices among these families, as mediated through use of smart phone apps. In particular, we were interested in how and whether machine translation (MT) apps such as Google Translate or Microsoft Translator provided tools for navigating the Arabic-English language divide. Through a total of 17 informal interviews with 12 different families, we found that digitally mediated communication and the smart phones that facilitate it were ubiquitous channels for interactions at work, school, benefits offices, and charitable organizations. In addition, MT apps were only one of multiple digital tools in use, and arguably not the most important ones. Keeping in touch with loved ones back home or in refugee camps through Whatsapp provided both connection and anxiety. Sharing photos and videos saved on smartphones or in apps like Instagram meant sharing families’ accomplishments and identities as well as new experiences. It was through these interactions that we came to see that digital tools multiplied the sites at which displaced families’ lives take place, maintaining connections to warfare and trauma even as they continued adjusting to their new surroundings.