Migrant digital placemaking for wellbeing: A netnography of Facebook groups

Abstract

This article analyses migrants’ use of social media and considers their relation to placemaking and urban wellbeing. It develops an easy to replicate experimental methodology drawing on netnography techniques to analyse Facebook group activity by Latin-American migrants in and on their way to London. Findings indicate that Facebook offers a multitude of public spaces facilitating mundane activities that are significantly generative of material, relational and subjective wellbeing, in both digital and analogue physical realms. The article hence posits digital placemaking as an extension and integral part of placemaking in analogue physical urban spaces. It further extends debates about the role of social media in migrant mobility, by showing their continued significance post-arrival and capable of fostering migrant belonging and place attachment.

Keywords

• Placemaking
• Wellbeing
• Migrant
• Netnography
• Urban
• Facebook