Uncovers how migrants actively use smartphones to shape their journeys, make strategic choices, and build communities.

Exploring how mobile media technologies are reshaping migration, this book focuses on the Central American migrant journey to the United States—one of the world’s largest migratory corridors. It traces how smartphones influence decisions to migrate, shape the journey itself, and mediate life in shelters and diasporic communities. Through rich ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and visual data, it reveals the deeply connected nature of contemporary migration, highlighting the agency and creativity of migrants as they adapt technologies to their own needs—establishing everyday practices and rituals along the way. Designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students in media studies, communication, anthropology, and sociology, the book offers a critical and timely perspective on the techno-politics of mobility and the digital dimensions of displacement.