Digital diaspora, mobility, and homeforeigner is very common among these migrant women in their mundane experience of social
exclusion, with challenges more than opportunities for interaction with the mainstream of the
host society, since diasporic individuals and ethnic minorities are frequently reminded of their
non-belonging status. The prevailing national cultures of the host society marked by mundane
“banal nationalism” (Billig 1995) alongside institutionalized racism can affect processes of global
mobility and the extent of willing integration or resisting non-integration. The experiences
of new migrant communities today, including those of the highly educated and skilled, global
knowledge diasporas, demonstrate that racism is still endemic and systemic.
Women’s confusions, struggles, and painful silences on racism continue to operate with a
lack of articulation and social support. Racism in its multiple forms of discrimination is felt
with sharp clarity, but often defies description (“cannot express but feel clearly”). A disarticula-
tion and unsympathetic response is the predicament that they never fully resolve in their daily
struggles of living in a world city and coping with its glorified myth. Problems of exclusion and
foreignness are often experienced as individual faults or weaknesses (“because my English is not
good enough”) and individual responsibilities (“because it was my choice to move here, my
responsibility”). This tendency shapes a diasporic consciousness that individuals are responsible
for their own choices and any unspeakable situations they happen to face and inhabit. Diasporic
space is not primarily a sociable space to valorize, connect, and exchange with others, but a space
of struggle to deal with societal insecurity and a tacit acceptance of individuated practice (“all
on my own”). The experiences of migration and displacement manifestly present unresolved
tensions in conflict with banal racism (“everyday little things”), implicitly violent communica-
tion, disrespect, isolation, and loneliness (“feel so alone”), as well as a necessary need to develop
empowering networks and meaningful relationships within new social spaces.
When the dominant meaning system of a new culture in a new place is seen as a constant
source of irritation or a daily reminder of non-belonging, migrants may decide to retreat into an
ethnic enclave. It is possible to live everyday diasporic lives without much regular social inter-
action with the dominant groups of the host society and with the symbolic spaces of the main-
stream media, too. Everyday UK television and ethos—“very national in its orientation” with
distinctive modes of address, humanly pleasing care structures, and the inflexion of a voice—may
work naturally on “those for whom it is made” (Scannell 1996), but it is experienced differently
by migrants in this study. Its defining character and image are often viewed as “too British,”
“not interesting,” “alienating,” or “no connection” within the national symbolic space, making
foreign subjects feel disengaged. “Watching TV is another work!” implies sometimes of a frus-
trating labor rather than an entertaining relaxation. The sojourners’ mentality and how they
think about belonging to the society (“I don’t belong here,” “always a foreigner”) are crucial
determinants of the modality of disengagement from the UK media.
Ethnic media, ethnic enclave
I am suddenly addicted to our Korean media ... All my friends in London happen to
be Asians, who are interested in Korean culture, TV drama, and music ... It is a small
Asian connection, does not go beyond that. Even between Asians, we imagine to be
unique, different from each other.
It’s all there! Through the Internet I watch Korean dramas, download movies, music
every night. On Cyworld I keep in touch with friends, express what I am doing, how
I feel, what made me angry today ... I cried while watching Korean dramas alone.
Perhaps the first time I cried while living abroad, never cried over any hardship. It
suddenly evoked a repressed feeling and made me realize home.