The FNS Doc.CH grant was awarded to Nina Khamsy for her doctoral research entitled “Scales of Mobility of Afghan Migrant Youth in the Digital Era”. Nina’s research focuses on the entanglement of mobility and digital connectivity in European migration trajectories. While the discussion on this topic has tended to insist on the empowering capacity of digital media - even conceiving them as a solution to the “migration crisis”, or on the threats of online surveillance for border control, Nina’s investigation centres on migrants’ everyday uses of digital media. To give a central attention to their own sociocultural trajectories, Nina will conduct an ethnography of digital practices of young Afghans on the move – a highly deterritorialized and dispersed population marked by important levels of media use and mobility in Europe. Nina will ask: how do young Afghans make use of digital media, and how, in turn, do digital media shape their migration trajectories? Her study will consider both online and in-person social relations in cities that form important points on their trajectories in Europe: Athens as an arrival point, Belgrade as a transit point, and Geneva as a desirable destination. Nina’s research will benefit from the guidance of Alessandro Monsutti and Till Mostowlansky from the anthropology and sociology faculty, and Zuzanna Olszewska from Oxford University.

Image source: © alliance/dpa/ZUM APRESS