The Paradox of a Mobile Society: Situating Cultural Studies in the Global South Context

Abstract

This provocation presents a critical reflection on the role of cultural studies in examining the consequences of an increasingly global and digital society. More specifically, I extend and situate the inquiry within the new mobilities paradigm, underlining how everyday personal, familial and social interactions have been shaped by the widespread uptake of digital technologies among migrants and their distant networks. Here I centre the transnational and networked home as a critical site of performing, embodying and negotiating linkages beyond borders. Importantly, reflecting on situating cultural studies within the context of the global South, I underscore the paradox of everyday, intimate and transnational practices as symptomatic of the operations of a neo-colonial and global economy. In doing so, this approach sheds light on advancing cultural studies as an intellectual and political inquiry on rethinking mobility justice in a globalising and networked society.