Infrastruktura migracyjna w Polsce i jej wielowymiarowość na przykładzie filipińskiego vloga YouTube

Abstract

International labor migration is increasingly facilitated by unofficial intermediaries who play a significant role within the diverse migration infrastructure. Growing uncertainty about the future caused by conflicts, economic crises, or pandemics has led migrants to increasingly seek employment through the Internet, where micro-influencers become active assistants, providing advice to those seeking work abroad. In recent years, Overseas Filipino Workers have become such active online intermediaries. Migrant vlogs have become an integral part of the multidimensional migration infrastructure, facilitating transnational labor intermediation and exposing issues related to navigating infrastructural dimensions for basic infrastructure users – migrants. The article aims to illustrate the multidimensionality of migration infrastructure through the example of the YouTube vlog. Despite attempts to liberalize migration management methods, such as through the possibility of seeking employment online, they have not led to the development of migrants’ migratory capacities. Nowadays, migrants – the basic infrastructure users – have to navigate through additional elements of infrastructure (vlogs) as well as face growing bureaucratization of the process itself, which should be considered an example of infrastructural involution (Xiang and Lindquist 2014). The paper presents the results of a qualitative content analysis of the comments posted under the video of a Filipina vlogger living in Poland, who provides advice on her YouTube channel to people interested in employment. The results illustrate the multidimensionality of migration infrastructure on the example of a vlog and prove the infrastructural involution resulting from the growing complexity of commentators’ needs.