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Based on research with young Congolese in the diaspora, new research shows how refugees use social media tools to challenge conventional understandings of 'refugee voices'

In a contribution to a special issue on 'refugee voice' of Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, IMI Research Officer Marie Godin and Giorgia Doná argue that new social media enable refugees and members of diaspora communities to actively manage the creation, production and dissemination of their own voices. By using these tools of self-representation they challenge mainstream politics of representation of 'refugee voices', as framed by social actors such as academics and representatives of humanitarian organisations.

Based on two principal examples, the Geno-cost project created by the Congolese Action Youth Platform (CAYP) and Refuge, a spoken word piece by the writer and poet JJ Bola, the article suggests that by using these new territories for self-expression and creating a 'politics from below', young Congolese are also challenging global power relationships at local, national, transnational and international levels.

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