Migration Infrastructure, Digital Connectivity and Porous Borders: Vietnamese Migration to Australia

Abstract

The burgeoning literature on migration and information and communication technologies (ICTs) provides rich empirical evidence of how social media and networking platforms are becoming integral to cross-border migration, increasingly blurring the boundaries between physical and virtual worlds. Drawing from a qualitative study conducted between 2019 and 2023 on the Vietnam–Australia migration corridor, I discuss how virtual communities and digitally mediated migration infrastructure shape the ways migrants navigate the restrictive, but also defective, neoliberal migration regimes in the Global North. Social media facilitate brokers' access to a wide range of potential clients but challenge their previously dominant position in migration mediation. Digital divides create uneven mobility pathways, reproducing and exacerbating social inequalities among people on the move. A focus on migration mediation at the intersection of social-digital spheres generates vital insights into the continually evolving relationships between the state, market and migrants in the Digital Age.