Migration, Diaspora & Transnational Media Spaces: How Migrant Communities Use Media to Maintain Identity, Integrate, and Influence Politics in Host and Home Countries

This study examines how Nigerian diaspora communities in the United Kingdom and Canada use digital media to maintain cultural identity, navigate integration, and influence politics across host and home countries. Drawing on a qualitative, multi-sited design combining digital ethnography, remote semi-structured interviews, and document/content analysis, the study analyzes diaspora-oriented spaces including Facebook groups and pages, WhatsApp and Telegram communities, and creator platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. The findings show that diaspora media spaces operate as transnational infrastructures: they sustain belonging through shared cultural narratives and boundary work, function as practical settlement networks for jobs, housing, and institutional guidance, and become mobilization arenas during homeland elections, protests, and crises. Political engagement is dual-oriented, with homeland politics often emotionally central and event-driven, while host-country participation is more pragmatic and policy-triggered. Platform choice follows polymedia logics, but participation and influence are shaped by visibility regimes, moderation constraints, and risk environments including harassment and perceived surveillance. The study contributes an integrated account of transnational media spaces that links everyday migrant communication to cross-border political effects and highlights governance and safety as constitutive conditions of diaspora public life.