Internet Diaspora: how Romanian scholars abroad connect home

Abstract

Recent migrations occur in a world deeply transformed by the digital revolution. The technological context of XXIst century is profoundly changing the nature of distant social relations. Nowadays, new migrants’ generations can practice daily a biography liberated from territorial constraints, being “here and there” at the same time and able to take decision and act over the borders. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are intrinsically related to new networked ways of being, generating new patterns of transnational action. They facilitate both a transnational mobilization around local and specific aims, and local actions based on more universal principles. In addition, the use of ICTs by highly skilled migrants, endowed with high human, social and cultural capital, give place to innovative collaborative strategies. This paper aims to approach and explain some outcomes of the Romanian scientific migration by integrating this new reality. First, a short theoretical review will highlight the recent renewal of brain migration approaches, with specific focus on “diaspora networks”. Then, the study of a website and a related virtual network (www.ad-astra.ro) of Romanian scientists scattered around the world will enable the analysis of the role of e-practices in the emergence of a transnational space in which migrants and non-migrants meet and act jointly in a new transnational public sphere. In this way, this paper will account for the emergence of a Romanian scientific e-diaspora, its impact on the scientific and research reform in Romania and its contribution to transnationally enable local change and reverse brain drain.