IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/tefoso/v146y2019icp331-338.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

People, information and culture: Locating forms of capital by Afghan Sikh refugees in India through ICTs

Author

Listed:
  • Pandey, Shelly
  • Ilavarasan, P. Vigneswara

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of Afghan Sikh refugees in New Delhi, India, the present paper explores the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially social media, in their lives and practices to survive after the forced migration. The unique identity of being Afghan Sikhs in India is largely unknown, as the notion of Afghans is attached to the Muslims and Sikhs to the Indians. The extant knowledge on literature on their narratives of forced migration and struggles of re-settlement is inadequate. The present paper employs the concept of ‘capital’ by Bourdieu to argue that ICTs enable refugees to gain different forms of capital in their journey of survival in a new country post forced migration. The paper highlights the importance of ICTs being equal to the physical infrastructure for the refugees. The digital practices provide them with a collectively owned capital in the form of relevant information and experiences of being refugees. The visibility enabled by the ICTs has contributed to their social, economic and symbolic capitals.

Suggested Citation

  • Pandey, Shelly & Ilavarasan, P. Vigneswara, 2019. "People, information and culture: Locating forms of capital by Afghan Sikh refugees in India through ICTs," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 331-338.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:146:y:2019:i:c:p:331-338
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2019.06.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162518315117
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.techfore.2019.06.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jenny C. Aker & Isaac M. Mbiti, 2010. "Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 207-232, Summer.
    2. Betts, Alexander & Bloom, Louise & Kaplan, Josiah & Omata, Naohiko, 2016. "Refugee Economies: Forced Displacement and Development," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198795681.
    3. Lee Komito, 2011. "Social media and migration: Virtual community 2.0," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(6), pages 1075-1086, June.
    4. Lee Komito, 2011. "Social media and migration: Virtual community 2.0," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(6), pages 1075-1086, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahmed, Nova & Tasmin, Mahbuba & Nasim Ibrahim, Sayyed Mohammad, 2022. "Technology for empowerment: Context of urban Afghan women," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sofia Gil-Clavel & Emilio Zagheni & Valeria Bordone, 2022. "Close Social Networks Among Older Adults: The Online and Offline Perspectives," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(3), pages 1111-1135, June.
    2. Sophie Lohmann & Emilio Zagheni, 2020. "Multi-platform social media use: little evidence of impacts on adult well-being," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2020-023, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    3. A. I. Alekseev & D. M. Vinogradov & I. P. Smirnov & A. A. Smirnova, 2021. "Between Two Capitals: Population Migrations of Tver Oblast and Their Reflection on the Social Network Vkontakte," Regional Research of Russia, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 71-79, January.
    4. Mitra, Amit & Evansluong, Quang, 2019. "Narratives of integration: Liminality in migrant acculturation through social media," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 474-480.
    5. Adam Worrall & Alicia Cappello & Rachel Osolen, 2021. "The importance of socio‐emotional considerations in online communities, social informatics, and information science," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(10), pages 1247-1260, October.
    6. Drydakis, Nick, 2020. "Mobile Applications Aiming to Facilitate Immigrants' Societal Integration and Overall Level of Integration, Health and Mental Health: Does Artificial Intelligence Enhance Outcomes?," IZA Discussion Papers 13933, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Sofia Gil‐Clavel & André Grow & Maarten J. Bijlsma, 2023. "Migration Policies and Immigrants’ Language Acquisition in EU‐15: Evidence from Twitter," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 49(3), pages 469-497, September.
    8. Amanda Alencar & Vasilki Tsagkroni, 2019. "Prospects of Refugee Integration in the Netherlands: Social Capital, Information Practices and Digital Media," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 184-194.
    9. Troy Curry & Arie Croitoru & Andrew Crooks & Anthony Stefanidis, 2019. "Exodus 2.0: crowdsourcing geographical and social trails of mass migration," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 161-187, March.
    10. B. Sofia Gil-Clavel & Emilio Zagheni & Valeria Bordone, 2020. "Close social networks among older adults: the online and offline perspectives," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2020-035, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    11. Joana Topa & Carla Cerqueira, 2023. "The Trajectories That Remain to Be Told: Civic Participation, Immigrant Organizations, and Women’s Leadership in Portugal," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-20, November.
    12. Juan Miguel Rodriguez-Lopez & Meike Schickhoff & Shubhankar Sengupta & Jürgen Scheffran, 2021. "Technological and social networks of a pastoralist artificial society: agent-based modeling of mobility patterns," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 681-707, November.
    13. Gutiérrez-Romero, Roxana & Ahamed, Mostak, 2021. "COVID-19 response needs to broaden financial inclusion to curb the rise in poverty," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    14. Olayinka David-West & Oluwasola Oni & Folajimi Ashiru, 2022. "Diffusion of Innovations: Mobile Money Utility and Financial Inclusion in Nigeria. Insights from Agents and Unbanked Poor End Users," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 1753-1773, December.
    15. Simplice A. Asongu, 2014. "Knowledge Economy and Financial Sector Competition in African Countries," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 26(2), pages 333-346, June.
    16. Sulaiman, H. & Malec, K. & Maitah, Mansoor, 2014. "Appropriate tools of Marketing Information System for Citrus Crop in the Lattakia Region, R. A. SYRIA," AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Economics and Management, vol. 6(3), pages 1-10, September.
    17. Chen,Rong - DECIG, 2021. "A Demand-Side View of Mobile Internet Adoption in the Global South," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9590, The World Bank.
    18. Maude Hasbi & Antoine Dubus, 2019. "Determinants of Mobile Broadband Use in Developing Economies: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," Working Papers hal-02264651, HAL.
    19. Grégoire Rota-Graziosi & Fayçal Sawadogo, 2020. "The tax burden on mobile network operators in Africa," Working Papers hal-03109370, HAL.
    20. Aimable Nsabimana & Patricia Funjika, 2019. "Mobile phone use, productivity and labour market in Tanzania," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-71, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Afghan refugees; India; Forced migration; Information and communication technologies (ICTs); Forms of capital; Bourdieu;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:146:y:2019:i:c:p:331-338. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00401625 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.