Maria Paola Pofi (KCL) - 2018-19 Students
maria_paola.pofi@kcl.ac.uk

Womanhood Across Borders in the Digital Age: Transnational migration, social networking sites, and young women’s subjectivity

My research project aims at investigating the phenomena of transnational migration, digital culture, and gender identity through a combination of post-colonial, post-feminist and media theories Taking as a case study the Bangladeshi diaspora in Italy and the Italian-Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK, I will focus on second-generation young women in order to analyse how they engage with social networking sites in their everyday lives and how they articulate their online (gendered) subjectivity.  

The interlacing of transnational and intersectional approaches will enable me to conduct an empirical study on cross-border identity formation. In particular, categories of gender, ethnicity, and religion will be analysed as constantly reconfigured and reinvented through both the process of migration and the appropriation of technological affordances. The complex relationship between diaspora, media, and youth identity will be further explored by looking at media consumption/production as a site of cultural connections, negotiations, but also inter-cultural conflicts.