In/Visible Images of Mobility: Sociality and Analog–Digital Materiality in Personal Archives of Transnational Migration

Abstract

This article explores portrait images, wedding albums and Facebook images as personal migrant archives. Examining the particular temporalities and the analog–digital materialities of the images, we unfold their significance for the construction of transnational sociality among Senegalese in Berlin and Dakar, from the perspective of women. By addressing distinct audiences the archives of migration are purposefully made (in)visible by their owners, creating gendered and generational “intimate publics.” Foregrounding the notion of the active personal migrant archive, we see the archive as a resource for aspiration and communication among socially close yet geographically distant persons.