Migrant mothers in the digital diaspora: Class and identity among Turkish women in the Netherlands

This article examines the processes of diaspora formation and digital mediation within the Turkish diaspora in the Netherlands by investigating how motherhood and class-based identification influence community building and inform participants’ affinities towards specific social media platforms and their affordances. Particularly, the article explores how class distinctions, emerging from the recent surge of self-identified expat Turkish migrants to the Netherlands, play a pivotal role in shaping digitally mediated diasporic mothering practices. The article raises important questions about the gendered relationship between expat migrants, diaspora and the use of digital media. The study shows that for Turkish expat women, mothering and disidentification from the historical Turkish community in the Netherlands contributed highly to the formation of digital diaspora spaces. Moreover, Facebook emerges as a significant social media platform for these highly-educated migrants and a space that affords the materialization of such class distinctions.