Abstract
This paper gives insights into how the personal and public spheres of asylum seeking interrelate when discussing connectivity. In doing so, the author discusses the following research questions: How is connectivity embedded in refugees and asylum seekers' everyday practices? And in which ways does this personal dimension interact with the public (structural level), given their increased presence in public spaces? In order to respond to the research questions, a qualitative-ethnographic approach was chosen in order to avoid a media-centric analysis. As the results show, the meaning of the Internet is based on the agency of asylum seekers given restricted access to public spaces and social support offline. Thus, the results reveal that both Internet access and experiences of transnationalism/displacement constitute and configure connectivity. Following this line of argument, connectivity widely compensates for the spaces of action, spaces of learning, spaces of interaction and spaces for information that are missing offline. However, as the results show that it is crucial to focus not only on the individual benefit of ICT in refugees’ trajectories but also on questions related to access and affordability capabilities. In line with this, the notion of motility lays bare the inequalities that are the result of an unequal access to a means of mobility/immobility by dramatically intensifying the civil stratification system. as the mapping and analyses of the data show, public connectivity provided by public Wi-Fi hotspots has changed from a human right into an instrument of power that has imposed new inequalities and new exclusion forms, allowing only those who can afford it, free access to Wi-Fi, discriminating against those at the bottom of the civic stratification system.