Communicative Practices and Online Communities on Social Media in Migration Context

The chapter investigates the digital communication practices among a group of young migrants living in Palermo. In particular, the analysis aims to study both how migrant youth who belong to superdiverse networks use communicative resources and the way they handle the networked relations they establish in the host community. The data of the chapter come from the Facebook feeds of two young migrant youths who met each other and the researchers at a school of Italian in Palermo. Central in our work is the recognition of the need to change our views about the composition and trajectories of migrant groups. In this perspective we review literature on digital diasporas, underlining how this literature has built on research about social media communication, particularly work on context collapse and audience design. Finally, we argue that neither the concept of “diaspora” nor the different labels used for this kind of community (“intradiverse”, “light” “of practice” and the like) are able to capture the complexity of networks that young migrants are shown to construct online.