Abstract

The growing mobility of people within and into the Asia Pacific region has created environments of increasing diversity as nations become hosts to both permanent and temporary multicultural societies. How do we begin to gauge the impact of mobility and multiculturalism on individuals and groups in this diverse region today? The authors of The Asia Pacific in the Age of Transnational Mobility turn to social media as a tool of inquiry to map how mobile subjects and minorities articulate their sense of community and identity. The authors see social media as a platform that allows users to document and express their individual and collective identities, sometimes in restrictive communication environments, while providing a sense of belonging and agency. They present original empirical work that attempts to help readers understand how mobile subjects who circulate in the Asia Pacific create a sense of community for themselves and articulate their ethnic, ideological and national identities.

As the age of social media progresses, the Asia Pacific, like the rest of the world, is experiencing an increase in cultural diversity and global connection. Those within the region are witnessing rapid social and cultural changes. As individuals and groups navigate through an increasingly mobile, transnational and multicultural ethnographic landscape, social media provides a sense of belonging for these networked communities.

Social media allows individuals and groups to map and redefine their evolving communal and national identities and thus form sometimes new, vibrant and necessary communities to help create individual and group belonging and agency. While creating a sense of belonging and agency in their respective homeland(s), individuals and groups are also able to connect to global networks. Recognising these layered and intertwined complexities governing societal and cultural cohesion, the authors in this collection each discuss the innate challenges of the social media era on culture, identity and social interaction. This original empirical work documents social media as a user platform for the expression of individual and collective identities.

‘This is a crucially important volume on transnational mobility that brings together excellent studies covering a geographical range from Australia to Vietnam. What sets the volume apart from others that have engaged with questions of transnationalism is that each study builds on exceptionally rich material while engaging with the bigger questions of migration and mobility.’
—Michiel Baas, Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Catherine Gomes is a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

Journal of the Indian Ocean Region

‘An exemplary text that highlights how the Asia Pacific is driving the age of digital connectivity and how Asians are redefining their location, identity and belonging through the internet and social media.’ –Selvaraj Velayutham, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, Australia

‘Gomes has brought together a range of scholars to investigate how people in the Asia-Pacific use social media to articulate their sense of identity and community in the midst of transience, cultural diversity and transnational mobility. This book fills a gap by connecting the everyday social media practices of people from the Asia-Pacific with their social and cultural contexts, at times in a controlled communication environment.’ –Supriya Singh, Professor, Sociology of Communications, RMIT University, Australia

‘A groundbreaking collection of essays that represent the latest and cutting-edge scholarship which critically examines the impact and implications of social media on defining and shaping the intersections and interactions of transnational migrations and other forms of border crossings with community belonging and identity constructions in the Asia Pacific today.’ –Jonathan Y. Tan, Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan Professor of Catholic Studies, Department of Religious Studies, and affiliated faculty in the Ethnic Studies and Asian Studies Programs, Case Western Reserve University, USA

‘This volume breaks many new grounds, and is a brilliant example of cutting-edge interdisciplinary social research. It will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of cultural studies, mobility research and Southeast Asian studies.’ –Peidong Yang, Research Fellow, Division of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore