Trado ergo sum

• Main Author: Beatrice Zani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Rosenberg & Sellier 2020-11-01
• Series: Quaderni di Sociologia
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/qds/3676

In the digital age, in the frame of a compressed modernity, this article considers the creative mobilities of migrants, commodities, and emotions on digitalized economic trails. Through multi-situated and virtual ethnography, based on the case study of Chinese women’s e-commerce in Taiwan, it shows how entrepreneurship, economies and markets can be socially and emotionally constructed by a combined action of multiple social networks and affectional ties operating on and through online applications. Specifically, online socializations, emotions, and digitalized practices of reciprocity and mutual help amongst migrants sustain the making of online business, e-commerce, and transnational economies. A typology of multipolar economies – of melancholy, of ambition and of responsibility – illustrates how entrepreneurship is entangled with social ties, affectional networks and emotions. On digital and hidden back-roads, migrant women, commodities and emotions’ mobilities draw new geographies of globalization.