The burgeoning literature on migration and information and communication technologies (ICTs) provides rich empirical evidence of how social media and networking platforms are becoming integral to cross‐border migration, increasingly blurring the boundaries between physical and virtual worlds. Drawing from a qualitative study conducted between 2019 and 2023 on the Vietnam–Australia migration corridor, I discuss how virtual communities and digitally mediated migration infrastructure shape the ways migrants navigate the restrictive, but also defective, neoliberal migration regimes in the Global North. Social media facilitate brokers' access to a wide range of potential clients but challenge their previously dominant position in migration mediation. Digital divides create uneven mobility pathways, reproducing and exacerbating social inequalities among people on the move. A focus on migration mediation at the intersection of social‐digital spheres generates vital insights into the continually evolving relationships between the state, market and migrants in the Digital Age.

中文翻译：

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移民基础设施、数字连接和漏洞百出的边界：越南人移民到澳大利亚


关于移民和信息通信技术 （ICT） 的大量文献提供了丰富的实证证据，证明社交媒体和网络平台如何成为跨境移民不可或缺的一部分，日益模糊物理世界和虚拟世界之间的界限。根据 2019 年至 2023 年间对越南-澳大利亚移民走廊进行的一项定性研究，我讨论了虚拟社区和数字介导的移民基础设施如何塑造移民在北半球限制性但也有缺陷的新自由主义移民制度中航行的方式。社交媒体为经纪人接触广泛的潜在客户提供了便利，但也挑战了他们以前在移民调解中的主导地位。数字鸿沟造成了不均衡的出行路径，复制并加剧了流动人群之间的社会不平等。关注社会-数字领域交叉点的移民中介，为数字时代国家、市场和移民之间不断发展的关系提供了重要的见解。