Romanian Transnationalism, Mobility and Integration in Sweden : Social Media Manifestations and Its Uses Among Migrants

Abstract: With the research aim to analyze how the Romanian migrants residing in Sweden use social media for transnational, mobility and integration purposes, this thesis builds on previous transnationalism and social media literature to reach its key findings. Its theoretical field uses Vertovec’s takes on transnationalism along with Wolpert’s place utility theory in order to analyze the observational results. These results were acquired by doing observations of four Facebook groups over a one-month period to which representative discussions from a few group posts were added. Thus, on one hand, the results show that the observed Romanian Facebook groups serve as avenues for socializing, networking and help-seeking between the Romanian migrants in Sweden. Strong potential for the formation of personal connections based on the discussions had by the migrants is also found. On the other hand, this thesis finds that the groups also function as major pathways for the reproduction of Romanian political and cultural aspects within the migrant community, a process which is not obvious and not directly intended for these groups.