Migrant Agency and Platformed Belongings: The Case of TikTok

2024

Daniela Jaramillo-Dent /

Alencar, Amanda /

Asadchy, Yan

In: Leurs, Koen; Ponzanesi, Sandra. Doing Digital Migration Studies: Theories and Practices of the Everyday. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 239-258.

This chapter derives from a project exploring TikTok content by 53 Latin American migrant creators residing in the US and Spain. The goal was to identify their creative practices and affordance uses through a series of multimodal content analyses. Based on our analytical approach we propose four distinct forms of narrative agency and belonging experienced by these creators: 1) (self)representative, 2) utilitarian, 3) prescriptive and 4) activist agentic styles. The proposed typology expands the notion of platformed belongings understood as creative, narrative and agentic practices deployed by migrants—and other marginalized groups—that instrumentalize platform vernaculars and affordances to construct their identity by connecting, countering or establishing a dialogue with existing narratives.