Dynamiques migratoires contemporaines dans le sud de la France

Abstract

In this article, we shall study how young people migrating today from Italy to France use and conceive social media—their practices, and representations. In order to get a better grasp of Italian migration to the PACA (Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur) region and to Marseille we shall first put it into a socio-historical and statistical perspective. We shall then address more contemporary, and micro-social, issues linked to how migrants use social networks today. We discover that these media represent new virtual spaces where a process of identification with a new imagined community can become concrete. We present a qualitative inquiry consisting of online interviews and observation, basing our analysis on data and discursive sequences. The results show a polyphonic range of references of belonging, and that the uses of social media are socially determined. These findings help us understand how the Italians in Marseille use online social media while they are migrating to, and settling in, a new country.

Keywords

• Italy
• France
• migration
• mobility
• social media
• virtual spaces