Editorial Media and Migration: Learning in a Globalized World

The background for this special issue extends at least a decade back in time,
when the two of us (Mariëtte de Haan and Kevin Leander), along with other
colleagues such as Sandra Ponzanesi of the Wired Up project, were reading
works such as Appadurai’s Modernity at Large (1996). Then, nearly a
decade after Appadurai had penned his landmark book, we were trying to
conceive of the relations of the movements he was concerned with to youth
culture and to youth learning opportunities. How might we translate such
insights on the fluid and shifting ‘scapes’ of modern life, including especially,
the movements of people (ethnoscapes) and movements of media (medioscapes)
into an understanding of learning opportunities and learning connections
in a world of increasing flows? In particular, how are these flows or forms of
migration co-constituted or otherwise related to one another in modern,
global life? And for whom?
We are pleased to bring together a set of studies that address such questions
for us that have been growing for a long time, including during the course of our
research about borders and across borders.