Heike Mónika Greschke - Is There a Home in Cyberspace?: The Internet in Migrants Everyday Life and the Emergence of Global Communities

First published 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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2012 Taylor & Francis

The right of Heike Mnika Greschke to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greschke, Heike Mnika.

Is there a home in cyberspace? : the Internet in migrants everyday life and the emergence of global communities / by Heike Mnika Greschke.

p. cm. (Routledge research in information technology and society; 14)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Internet and immigrants. 2. ImmigrantsCultural assimilation. 3. InternetSocial aspects. 4. Transnationalism. I. Greschke, Heike Mnika. II. Title.

JV6225.G744 2012

302.231dc23

2011039483

ISBN: 978-0-415-89312-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-12402-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by IBT Global.

Women purportedly lack in role models who by simply being who they are encourage others to follow them on the rocky road of scientific careers. I am very lucky to have been guided through the scientific adventure documented in this book by several people who have been role models for me, yet in a more creative sense. First and foremost, I would like to thank Professors Jrg Bergmann, Bettina Heintz, Ruth Aya and Luis Guarnizo, who, by being who they are, have encouraged me to follow my own inquisitiveness. They have shared with me their knowledge, experience and passion for research, enabling me to bring to light an unknown phenomenon. My gratitude goes as well to the participants of the EMCA study group and the World Concepts and Global Structural Patterns research training group at Bielefeld University for creative data analysis sessions, criticism and surprising findings. I would like to give special thanks to Sarah Hitzler, Anja Jacobi, Antonia Krummheuer and Paul Mecheril for their constructive advice and also for questioning well-defined interpretations. I am indebted to the German Research Foundation. Without their financial support, neither the research nor its publication would have been possible. Finally, I owe a great personal debt of gratitude to the inhabitants of Cibervalle for receiving me wholeheartedly and making me one of them; and to my mother, for having unquestionable confidence in me.

April 2009, Heike Mnika Greschke

This study was originally written in German and published in 2009 with the German publisher Lucius & Lucius. For the English-language edition, some parts of the book have been revised in order to include the current state of the (methodological) debate as well as recently published Spanish literature on Paraguayan migration. I am indebted to Professor Wulf D. v. Lucius for relinquishing the English-language rights to the book. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the German Research Foundation for making the English edition possible. Finally, my deepest thanks go to Tink Diaz, Matthew DiFranco and Johanna Gesing. Without their great commitment and support, this English edition would not have been written.

Generic terms from the field, which are essential for the cultural household of Cibervalle, are here kept in the original, marked with a and explained in the glossary of this book.

The idea for the present study arose from my observations during stays in Paraguay, Bolivia and Spain between 1999 and 2003. In both Paraguay and Bolivia, I found that the advantages and disadvantages of migration were a frequent subject of conversation in everyday life, as well as in the mass media. At the same time, the proliferation of commercial Internet cafs was obvious in these Latin American countries as well as in Spain: They seemed to have sprung up like mushrooms. While I was checking my mails in Internet cafs in Bolivia and Paraguay, I often noticed older people sitting next to me, sometimes accompanied by small children. They would frequently ask the Internet caf staff for help with computer problems. I found this irritating at first, assuming that the Internet is a First World technology primarily used by young people. Why were there so many Internet cafs in the poverty-stricken towns of Bolivia and Paraguay? And what were those people doing there?