Digital Passages: Digital “This book analyzes data about the everyday digital lives of Moroccan- media Dutch youth gathered by a gifted researcher over many years. A rich and matters complex picture emerges, one that adds substantially to the existing scholarship on xenophobia, youth and social media, and identity. Strikingly interdisciplinary, humane, and fascinating research from a nuanced feminist perspective.” Lisa Nakamura, Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor “His methods allow us to see these young people as agents who make 2.0Migrant Youth decisions in their media use and production. Overall the extent, depth and scope of this project makes it a strong contribution to the study of youth cultures in global media contexts.” Radhika Gajjala, Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University “Nothing else has been published on these topics that can match the rigour and insight of Koen Leurs’ innovative book. Neither cheerleader nor nay sayer, he blasts apart every over simple assumption about social media in the everyday life of these marginalised and misunderstood young Dutch people. It should be read by everybody interested in the power of network technologies that have altered solidarity, place and belonging and are now transforming the meaning of culture itself.” Paul Gilroy, Professor of American and English Literature at King’s College London. koen leurs koen leurs is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science. He is affiliated with the Institute for Cultural Inquiry and the Digital Passages: Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University. Migrant Youth 2.0 Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections Amsterdam AUP.nl University 978 908 9 6 464 08 Press koen leurs Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0 MediaMatters is a series published by Amsterdam University Press on cur- rent debates about media technology and practices. International scholars critically analyze and theorize the materiality and performativity, as well as spatial practices of screen media in contributions that engage with today’s (digital) media culture. For more information about the series, please visit www.aup.nl Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0 Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections Koen Leurs Amsterdam University Press This book is published in print and online through the online OAPEN library (www.oapen.org). OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe. This study was conducted as part of the Utrecht University Executive Board-funded High Potential project Wired Up: Digital Media as Innovative Socialization Practices for Migrant Youth (2008-2012). This research was also supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme, project reference 332318 Urban Politics of London Youth Analyzed Digitally (UPLOAD) (2013-2015). This publication was made possible by financial support from the Utrecht University Library Open Access Fund, Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICON), seed funding by Cultures, Citizen- ship and Human Rights (CCHR) and a 2013 Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Council for the Humanities Stipend. Cover illustration: C215 - Mirleft stencil image Cover design: Suzan Beijer Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 640 8 e-isbn 978 90 4852 304 7 doi 10.5117/9789089646408 nur 670 Creative Commons License CC BY NC (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) K. Leurs / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2015 Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise). Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. Table of Contents Acknowledgements 11 Introduction 13 1. Online/offline space and power relations 16 Digital divides 19 Internet platforms as passages 21 Space invader tactics 23 2. Digital identity performativity 25 Micro-politics 27 Intersectionality 29 Digital identities: Materiality, representation & affectivity 30 3. Moroccan-Dutchness in the context of the Netherlands 33 Deconstructing labels 35 4. The transnational habitus of second-generation migrant youth: From roots to routes 42 5. Hypertextual selves: Digital conviviality 47 6. Structure of the book 48 1. Methodological trajectory 51 1.1 Empiricism versus constructivism 52 1.2 The Wired Up survey 55 Constructing the survey 55 The power of definition 59 Survey sampling and access 60 Conducting the survey 63 Descriptive survey data about digital practices of Moroccan- Dutch youth 64 1.3 In-depth interviews 70 Interview sampling 71 Doing interviews using participatory techniques 75 Reflexivity and power relations 80 Inside and outside school: The dynamics of interview settings 84 Selecting field sites 87 1.4 Virtual ethnography 88 Publicly accessible digital field sites 89 Accessing closed digital field sites 91 1.5 Analyzing informants’ narratives 94 Politics of translation 95 Coding 97 Feminist poststructuralist critical discourse analysis 98 1.6 Conclusions 100 2. Voices from the margins on Internet forums 103 2.1 Internet forum participation among Moroccan-Dutch youth 105 Marokko.nl and Chaima.nl 106 2.2 Theorizing Internet forums as subaltern counterpublics 110 2.3 Digital multiculturalism: “Not all Moroccans are the same” 117 Hush harbors 120 The carnivalesque 121 Networked power contradictions 123 2.4 Digital “hchouma”: Renegotiating gender 126 Daring to break taboos: “I just want to know what ‘the real deal’ is” 128 2.5 Digital postsecularism: Performing Muslimness 131 Digital reconfigurations of religious authority 134 Voicing Muslimness 135 2.6 Conclusions 138 3. Expanding socio-cultural parameters of action using Instant messaging 141 3.1 Moroccan-Dutch youth using instant messaging 144 3.2 Theorizing instant messaging as a way of being in the world 149 3.3 The private backstage 153 Conversational topics 155 Boundary making 156 Unstable boundaries: Risks and opportunities 159 3.4 The more public onstage 163 Display pictures and gender stereotypes 164 Display names and bricolage 165 A funky, informal writing style 169 3.5 Conclusions 171 4. Selfies and hypertextual selves on social networking sites 173 4.1 Moroccan-Dutch youth on Hyves and Facebook 175 Self-profiling attributes 178 Motivations 179 4.2 Theorizing the politics of online social networking sites 181 Templates and user cultures 181 Neoliberal SNS logics 183 Teenager SNS logics 186 4.3 Selfies and the gendered gaze 188 Selfie ideals 188 Meeting the gaze: Objectification and/or representation 192 Victimization and cautionary measures 193 In-betweenness 196 4.4 Hypertextual selves and the micro-politics of association 197 Cultural self-profiling as fandom 200 Differential networking 207 Cosmopolitan perspectives 208 4.5 Conclusions 212 5. Affective geographies on YouTube 215 5.1 Moroccan-Dutch youth using YouTube 217 The Ummah 218 Fitna 220 5.2 Theorizing the politics of YouTube 223 5.3 Theorizing affective geographies and YouTube use 226 5.4 Rooted belongings: Transnational affectivity 230 5.5 Routed affective belongings across geographies 236 5.6 Conclusions 241 Conclusions 243 1. Transdisciplinary dialogues 245 2. Methodological considerations 249 3. Digital inequality and spatial hierarchies 251 4. Space invader tactics and digital belonging 253 Bibliography 261 Appendix 1: Meet the informants 287 Index 315 List of figures Fig. 1: “Mocro’s be like. Born Here,” tweet @Nasrdin_Dchar (March 17, 2014) 13 Fig. 2: Geweigerd.nl website top banner (March 6, 2005) 15 Fig. 3: Google.nl search for “Marokkanen” (June 28, 2012) 17 Fig. 4: Internet map made by Soesie, a thirteen-year-old girl 79 Fig. 5: Word cloud based on all Internet applications included in the Internet maps of the informants 87 Fig. 6: Four different approaches to discourse analysis (Phillips and Hardy, 2002, p. 20) 98 Fig. 7: “Average Moroccan boys look like this,” forum user Mocro_s contesting Moroccan-Dutch masculinity (Mocro_s, 2007a) 117 Fig. 8: “Average Moroccan girls look like this,” forum user Mocro_s contesting Moroccan-Dutch femininity (Mocro_s, 2007b) 126 Fig. 9: Forum user Mocro_s contesting Moroccan-Dutch religiosity (Mocro_s, 2007b) 132 Fig. 10: Cartoon Overvaren (in English: Sailing Across) (Rafje.nl, 2011) 136 Fig. 11: Screenshot of an MSN Messenger conversation with twelve-year-old Soufian (July 22, 2011) 146 Fig. 12: Hyves groups thirteen-year-old Anas linked to on his Hyves profile page (July 22, 2011) 173 Fig. 13: Facebook advertisements (advertisements appeared on October 16, 2011, and January 11, 2012) 185 Fig. 14: Still from Bezems 2010.!! uploaded by user Bezemswalla on YouTube (February 8, 2010) 195 Fig. 15: Hyves groups Midia linked