The “e-diasporas atlas” project is distinct from the standard atlas on migrations, that are traditionally focused on flux, trajectories or the dispersal of moving populations on physical territories. Recent trends in the migratory phenomenon show that, today, the migratory path goes through digital territories as well as – and sometimes before – physical territories.

The TIC-Migrations group has been working on Information and Communication Technologies practices of migrants for several years,. The group consists of thirty researchers in humanities and computer sciences. Its scientific agenda follows three axes. First, we will study how migrants use ICT as well as the different ICT services devoted to migration; Then, we will design a data basis of digital archives on migrations; Thirdly, we will develop a more theoretical approach and focus on the developments of epistemological and methodological perspective induced by ICT use in the scientific understanding of migrations. The “e-diasporas atlas” project will proceed from the synthesis of knowledge gathered along these three axes. Among the expected results, it will lead to new methods and tools of visualization and analyses (profiling) of the “web documents” devoted to the domain, particularly the dynamic of migratory schemes and their continuous evolutions in the field – so far unexplored – of the web and, in general, the digital sphere.

This project intends to be complementary to the standard representation of the migrations’ geography as well as a new way to study a sociological reality extremely contemporary and bearing new issue on migrations.
The web archive called “Migr’archive”, that we are going to elaborate in the first step of our project, aims to collect, store and represent Internet sites created by migrants and/or for migrants (associations, clubs, repertories…) as well as sites on migrants (by scientific institutions and administrations among others). Beyond the bare indexation of contents, it intends to open to researchers in social sciences a way to collectively run the data, to capitalize their own work and, finally, to convey these works and results in the form of, first, an on-line atlas on e-diasporas and, second, a collective publication off line.

The “e-diasporas atlas” project is articulated around three components:
-    the exploration: the expert-researchers involved in this project are to explore the web and to set up the corpus. They have at their disposal specific tools to guide them in this work (to capitalize the navigation, to enrich and organize their data, etc.). The researchers set up collaborative tools for each stage of the project.
-    The archive is an experimental archive dedicated to scientific purposes. Several corpus of Web sites are archived in their temporal depth that is to say with each version.
-    A transversal analysis is to be initiated as soon as the exploration phase is launched. It will allow us to evaluate the methodology and re-orientate the prospecting. The resources overview will be built several-handed and will be conveyed both with a domain map and with an enrichment of the data contained in the stabilized corpus. The characteristics and categories giving rise to repertories for the access to resources will be specified in collaboration with the semioticians.
In scientific terms, we aim as well to generate a convergence between social sciences and new communication technologies, to create the infrastructures of a “social informatics” – and notably a “network science” – and to carry out  an engineering in which we inject social sciences concepts. We will look to confront various theories of diasporas – and of social sciences – to a reality where technologies induce a mediation between collective relations more and more equipped and spread out. In this respect, we aspire to hand a pertinent demonstration for other disciplines in human and social sciences.

The “E-Diasporas Atlas” project proceeds from a will – and the stated scientific interest – to couple competences, of research teams specialized on migrations on one side (“Program TIC-Migrations”/FMSH; Migrinter/CNRS) and on ITC on another side (“Program TIC-Migrations”/FMSH; ENST; INA). Besides these partnerships between research teams, partnerships with private companies (Linkfluence) are as well set up.