Making a life through digital (in)securities: the entanglement of risks and skills in teen refugees' digital lives

This chapter explores what it means to lead a digital life as a refugee and as a teenager in Europe and to navigate a life full of insecurities – both everyday and ontological – with the support or hinderance of online tools, resources and connections. Drawing on a transurban study, the chapter shows how young refugees mobilize individual and collective agency to manage quotidian and ontological needs for connection, reassurance, and stability when living under conditions of vulnerability. The chapter reveals a precarious balance surrounding young refugees' well-being: on the one hand, developing digital skills to manage their lives as young transnational subjects; on the other, having to manage the many risks associated with being young, uprooted, and online. Drawing on 96 interviews and five creative workshops with refugee teenagers of different backgrounds in Athens, Brussels and London, we discuss refugee youth's vulnerabilities, struggles, and the agentive capabilities they develop while leading transnational digital lives.