Interfacing-with-Difference: Young Refugees Negotiating Cultural Differences in Cities and on Their Smartphones.

n this article we propose the concept interfacing-with-difference to address how young refugees living in cities negotiate cultural differences in public spaces and through using their smartphones. These encounters involve culturally diverse bodies, mobile media technologies, past-present-future temporalities and on- and offline, local and transnational spaces. Media, urban, migration, and gender studies are brought into dialogue to understand better this relational and power-ridden process. The concept is grounded in empirical data gathered through qualitative interviews and photo-elicitation with 42 informants. Fieldwork was focused on informants co-researching their own smartphones as personal pocket archives. We take a situated, intersectional approach to data analysis, in seeking to understand how factors including gender, race, class, sexuality, age, nationality among others co-construct each other and altogether have an impact upon their transnational connectivity, digitally mediated encounters with local difference and memory-making in a broader context of becoming in(visible) in urban spaces.