Making place beyond the city through the lens of digital media: Culturally diverse young people negotiating social change in a rural city

Understandings of digital technologies as tools to manage deficit, or conversely as mediators of harm, are prominent for young people in migrant communities negotiating the impacts of geographic isolation. Young people in these contexts emerge at the nexus of several categories of so called ‘disadvantage’ occupying spaces in the geographic and ethnic margins with curtailed independence. This paper provides an opportunity to progress discussions about young migrants beyond the city by putting dualistic, determinist approaches aside and answering calls from digital geographers to clarify the production of place through locational digital media. The production of rural place among culturally diverse young people highlights everyday uses of digital media to mediate locally embedded socialites while pointing to the place-making capabilities routinely practiced by the young participants.