*CFP* "DIGITAL DIASPORAS AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN THE AMERICAS", EDITED COLLECTION BRILL'S SERIES

David Dalton (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) and David Ramírez Plascencia (University of Guadalajara) invite abstracts for the edited collection Digital Diasporas and Public Engagement in the Americas, which will be submitted to Brill’s Series, Critical Latin America. The series editors with Brill have already expressed great interest in the project.

This volume focuses on the intersection amid the research on the conformation of digital diasporas and studies related to public engagement and social activism, particularly on how social platforms and mobile applications enable the conformation of virtual communities of Latin American migrants living abroad. Thanks to spaces of socialization like Facebook closed groups, Bulletin Board System (BBS), and WhatsApp groups among others, Latin Americans are able to stay in contact with the culture that they left behind. Members of these groups share information related to their homeland through discussions of food, music, celebrations and other cultural elements. Of course, these groups also discuss news and data related to the political, social, and economic situations of both their host country and their home countries. This everyday interchange encourages cohesion and solidarity, and it strengthens the feelings of belonging even when people may be thousands of kilometers apart. These diasporic virtual communities are not distant to the struggles in their homelands; on the contrary, thanks to digital technologies, people from these groups organize public and virtual demonstrations, thus constructing transnational solidarity chains to denounce injustices and discrimination in their country(ies).

The current refugee crises have seen Latin Americans migrate to different parts of their home countries, to other countries in the region, as well as to the United States and Europe. These conditions invite us to reconsider traditional concepts like identity, participation and community under a context of economic depression, social struggle and a rising hostility toward immigrants on both sides of the Atlantic. This edited book looks for contributions on relevant cases on how Latin Americans use information technologies to build diasporic communities not only to stay in contact with their culture at a distance but to power social activism and to fight back against social and political tribulations in both contexts (homeland and the host country). Above all, this anthology aims to illustrate that besides all the misfortunes, perils and the distance, diasporic communities are not willing to renounce to their cultures, nor do they merely acquiesce to the demands of their new host countries.

You are warmly invited to provide a document with a brief bio (no more than 250 words with titles, affiliations, and contacts) and an abstract (300-500 words). Please send the proposal to the following addresses: david.dalton@uncc.edu and david.ramirez@redudg.udg.mx 

Deadline January 15, 2019.