Creating Immigrant Identities in Cybernetic space

Ananda Mitra, Department of Communication, Wake Forest University
Presented in the Conference: Media Performance and Practice Across Cultures (March 14-17, 2002)
Conference held at: University of Wisconsin Madison, USA

Introduction

A significant development in the twentieth century has been the ease with which people can travel from one place to another, thus transporting their physical bodies to distant places. In the realm of the “analog” this has meant that the fixity of space has been disrupted, as transportation technologies have made it possible to travel conveniently and efficiently. Simultaneously, in the late twentieth century the shift to being digital has made it possible for information in the form of computer bits and bytes to travel freely across great distances. In the case of the “digital,” this movement can be instantaneous and can be achieved at a relatively low cost. Consequently, it can be argued that at the end of the twentieth century we were witnessing a communication revolution in facilitating the movement of people and information across great distances, thus producing a set of unique possibilities and conditions in the history of civilization.

One of the consequences of the transformations in the way we communicate is the creation of a “globalized” world, where distances mean little as people travel liberally and the sense of “permanence of place” is constantly challenged just as information can travel freely between people who are located far apart. Evidence of these changes can be found in increasing movement of people between nations and emerging trade partnerships both of which are resulting in new economic and political conditions. For instance, it is possible to turn to the example of the influx of Asian computer professionals in America and Western Europe prior to the Y2K threat, when trained professionals were “imported” in large numbers to prepare for the threat of a massive computer break down on the eve of the millennium. One consequence of this physical movement of people has been changes in the immigration policies in developed countries as well as the strengthening of technological ties between the developed and developing countries. While the “positive” forces of immigration and technology sharing attempt to create the proverbial “global village,” it is equally important to keep sight of the “negative” forces that attempt to disrupt this emerging global fraternity. Witness for instance, the increasing tensions over the prevalence of international terrorism, unstable and unethical economic practices by multi-national corporations, and the tendency to re-think the globe in broad terms of “good and evil.” For the arguments presented in this analysis both the positive and negative tendencies are equally important since they together produce certain unique challenges to the creation of immigrant identities.

These forces and the ensuing tensions constantly problematize two fundamental ontological attributes of being human – our senses of space and place. To a large degree, human beings are hardwired to be aware of the space they occupy. From scholars of culture such as Hall (1976), to those who examine proxemics have all argued that the knowledge of where one is at a moment in time is particularly important to understand one’s location within society and within the public sphere (see, e.g., Trenholm and Jensen, 1996). In another vein, Foucault (1986) makes much of the relationship between space and power pointing towards the way in which power is related to space and how they overdetermine each other. The idea of place is also picked up by others such as deCerteau (1984, 1993) who argues that much of cultural work is the process of negotiating one’s sense of space and much of that work is spent in producing specific places and spaces for oneself and one’s cultural group. These arguments suggest that space and place is central to the human condition. How we understand our relation to the place we are in can have an effect on several other central human issues. In this paper, I examine how the notion of space is intimately related to the sense of identity. This relationship is particularly important in a world where traditional definitions of space are being challenged, leading to a need to re-think the notion of identity in the new spaces we occupy.

Space and Identity

One of the ways in which the idea of identity has been explored and expanded is by establishing connections between identity, location and culture. Consider for instance the claim by Hall (1994) that our understanding and negotiation of where we live is central to defining our cultural and personal identity. Similarly, Fiske (1987) has argued that one’s identity is the product of various cultural and social forces that converge together in creating an identity at a moment in time. While such arguments highlight the connections between identity and culture, implicit in these perspectives on identity is the fact that such cultural and social convergences are particularly sensitive to one’s location and the way a human being is able to negotiate their existence in the place they occupy. This assumption become evident within the public sphere since it is precisely the question of spatial location and history that becomes the fountainhead for creating and sustaining an identity. Thus, it is no surprise that strangers meeting for the first time often ask the question, “where are you from?” to begin a conversation since it is assumed that the knowledge of spatial history will offer information about identity and thus culture. No doubt, the answer to the question distills the complexities of identity that scholars (se, e.g., Fiske, 1987) point out into a simplistic, “I am from Chicago,” but it still provides a starting point for the imaginations about the identity that could be obtained from the simple statement. To be sure, such exchanges also highlight the importance of creating and circulating a set of stories that make up the identity and the “identity narratives” of individuals and groups.

Given the increasing tendency to move around from one place to another, the identities and the related narratives tend to shift constantly. Yet, such unstable identities and the stories related to several (conflicting) identities do not make for a high quality of life. One of the greatest threats to the quality of life is the uncertainty about how a specific narrative would be accepted in a particular public sphere. One can never be sure about which narrative to invoke in particular conditions since there is always a sense of doubt about what would be the safest narrative at a moment in time and a point in space. An anecdote helps to make this point. Once in a taxi in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, the taxi driver asked me where I was from. When I said I was from America, I was immediately reprimanded for bombing Baghdad and ruining his hotel business in that city and driving him to becoming a tax driver in Dubai. When, however, I clarified that I was “originally” from India, the relationship changed significantly. Such issues become particularly tricky in the post-9/11 world where to be “good” is related to specific spatial identities. As espoused in President Bush’s State of the Union address in February 2002, the “axis of evil[i]” is made up of specific geographic spaces and if an individual’s identity is tied to one of the those places then one needs to be careful about how that identity narrative (often operationalized in the proper passport and visa) is told. There is thus a tension over identity narratives. First, the epistemic tension has to do with what identity narrative is most meaningful and secondly the ontological crisis resulting from the need to select identity narratives given the conditions one finds oneself in.

These two tensions are particularly important for immigrants from the East living in the West. To be an immigrant is to be in a tenuous situation in an increasing xenophobic world. This is particularly so if the immigrant happens to be in a place where he or she stands out at as different due to color, language, name or accent. Witness for instance the terrifying situation in which a good friend of mine was arrested by New York police for having a foreign accent, a foreign sounding name and the desire to sit in the middle of a crowded Broadway theater[ii]. In such anxious times it is important to have a stable identity and often that identity needs to be convergent with the “desired” identity of the adopted country. Therefore the epistemic component of the tension is resolved by constantly attempting to produce a set of identity narratives which will carry the preferred meaning in the public sphere. This often leads to abandoning any residual narratives from the place of origin and voraciously adopting new narratives and indicators to feel “safe” in the new place. Thus it is not unusual to see the display of the US flag on vehicles driven by people who do not “look” American but are surely attempting to produce an American identity. Indeed, there are increasing tendencies within culture to attain a sense of homogeneity. While diversity is provided lip service in many cultures, it is still the desire to see people become a part of the culture of the new space. Witness for instance the movement in Britain where a test of English could become a part of the citizenship requirements as it is already in the United States. These tendencies result in immigrants needing to try very hard to be able to adapt to the new space and define themselves around the new geographies.

At the same time, it is important to note that the adoption of the new safer narratives might not be purely driven by utilitarian goals. The voluntary movement, as in the case of many South Asians who have immigrated on their own volition, often results in the desire to take on the cultural attributes of the new place. This is a longing to create new identity narratives that draw from the new place. Thus the sporting of flags in cars, and the desire to describe oneself as, “from Chicago,” are attempts to construct and circulate a new identity narrative whose geographic indicators are now tied to the new place[iii].

As demonstrated here there both are utilitarian and other reasons to create and sustain new identity narratives. Yet, the fact remains that the familiar places have been left behind and the identity narratives related to those places of origin have become irrelevant and difficult to sustain[iv]. There is thus a tension that emerges between two conflicting set of identity narratives – one built around the place of adoption and one that is built around a place of origin. The resolution of this conflict can eventually settle some of the existential dissonance that is a part of the immigration experience. To a large degree, in the past, the way this tension has been resolved has resulted in some immigrants being able to completely restructure their identities by reconstructing the narratives around the new place while others have been unable to shed the earlier narratives and thus remain embedded in a place far away[v]. To a large degree the need to choose between two such identity narratives built around two places was governed by the fact that there was no good way to create a space where both the identity narratives could thrive. Given that these are narratives, and thus needed to be “spoken out” in some way, it was necessary to find the space where such articulations could happen. It was difficult to find such a place because it was often the case that the people either found themselves cloistered in the “little Vietnams,” where only the old narrative thrived, or placed in unfamiliar places where all the old narratives had to be abandoned. This is particularly true for the United States, with the country being as large as it is, where it is often possible to be located in a place where nothing remains familiar and all the old narratives have to be abandoned. Consequently, many people in diaspora find themselves in need of finding those places where the past identities can be resurrected.

In this paper, I argue that in the age of digital communications it is possible to re-create some of the places that have been lost because of geographic displacements. Further, I would propose that the new digital technologies make it possible for the diasporic immigrants, who are often marginalized, to find a new voice whose articulation helps to produce the new discursive places where the silenced identity narratives can be voiced again. I would be using examples from a specific web site to support the claim that immigrants mobilize the Internet to create new spaces using their own immigrant voices. However, before using the examples, it is useful to consider how the ideas of voice and space translate to the Internet, and help to understand the Internet phenomenon.

Voice, cybernetic space, and the Internet

The idea of voice when applied to the understanding of the Internet offers the opportunity to consider the ways in which a technological phenomenon can be conceptualized from a critical/cultural perspective. Such an approach offers the potential to consider the ways in which the Internet plays an important role in transforming the cultural space that people occupy. Voice has been an amply discussed construct within the realm of communication studies, and researchers have attempted to understand how the ability (or inability) to have a voice can have far reaching consequences. Among the various perspectives on voice, the one that is most suitable for thinking about the Internet is the one that suggests the having a voice in any space allows the speaker(s) to gain the powerful role of an "agent" who now has the ability to utter a point of view (see, e.g., Watts, 2001). This acquisition of agency is of particular importance for groups that have traditionally been powerless to have a voice in the public sphere. Very often the inability to speak has been related with cultural and economic capital where certain groups simply did not have the cultural and economic purchase to speak through the traditional cultural institutions such as those of media conglomerates. Often the marginalized have been spoken for by the institutions thus calling into question the authenticity of what is being said (Mitra, 2001a). Indeed, the tension over who is speaking for whom becomes critical when considering the political and social aspects of marginalization. In many cases the voice of the marginalized has been co-opted by the powerful thus diluting any potential of the authentic voice of the marginalized reaching a large audience (Fiske and Hartley, 1987). However, the Internet tends to change the relationship between the marginal and those who have spoken for them.

The Internet offers a discursive location where the traditionally powerless are able to voice themselves. This is related to the fact that it does not require a huge amount of financial or technological capital to have a voice in cyberspace, for instance, through the production and maintenance of a web site. It can be argued that those who could not afford to voice themselves through traditional means of communication can now hope to use the open-ended potential of the Internet technology to find a voice (Mitra, 2001a; Mitra 2001b; Mitra and Watts, in press). This technology offers the possibility of making oneself heard in a global forum without having the need to have access to huge amounts of resources. Nevertheless, putting up a web site does not guarantee that the voice is being heard. Given the nature of the Internet, it can well be the case that no one ever visits the web site. Yet, I would argue that, from the perspective of voice, the Internet offers the opportunity of creating an utterance that has the potential of being heard and thus the determinate moment in the process of voicing on the Internet is the moment of creating the utterance and not so much the moment at which the utterance is heard. This perspective is particularly important for marginal groups who might not have had the opportunity to express themselves in their own authentic voice until the Internet was available. In making that possibility available, the Internet empowers the marginal in ways that no other media technology has been able to do before. Further, the hypertextuality of the Internet makes that empowerment particularly significant since many such traditionally powerless voices can now connect with each other to empower each other.

Eventually a series of texts that could represent the voices of traditionally silent individuals/institutions get connected together on the Internet. Voice thus is concretized in the form of a series of interconnected texts and discourses. Using that as the point of departure I argue that the Internet can be thought of as a discursive virtual space produced by the variety of voices[vi]. There is indeed no specific location where the Internet is anchored and the discursive space is accessed through the computer monitor by negotiating the various texts that make up the voices of people and institutions. As a matter of fact, if these voices and the texts disappeared, the Internet, as a discursive space, would cease to exist and we would be left with a set of interconnected lifeless computers. What brings "life" to the Internet are the voices which, in unison, carve out specific spaces for the individuals and groups. Therefore the idea of voice allows for the possibility of rethinking the spatiality of the Internet.

On one hand, therefore, the Internet represents a space that exists in the virtual and is only palpable through the interpretation and readings of the voices that make up the discursive space. Yet for the users of the Internet it is impossible to forget about the physical space that is occupied when accessing the Internet. In other words, the negotiation with the Internet happens in a synthetic space where the physical location and the discursive space are equally important. Thus, there has been an argument for the re-thinking the space of the Internet as a cybernetic space where the voices articulate and construct the virtual discursive space that is negotiated by people who are necessarily inserted in a particular physical space (Mitra and Swartz, 2001; Mitra, 2001c). When negotiating with the Internet neither the virtual nor the real become necessarily more important but it is the combined cybernetic space that becomes critical.

In brief, what I am suggesting here is that the Internet provides a cybernetic space which is produced by the articulated voices of many people who themselves occupy different physical spaces. Thus, when people enter the cybernetic space from the real place they occupy to either voice themselves or to listen to the voice in the virtual space they interact both with the virtual and the real. Therefore, in that interaction with, and within, the cybernetic space Netizens have the potential to re-create both the real and virtual space they occupy. This potential could have far reaching implications for immigrants who have experienced a change in the real place they occupy. As pointed out earlier, the immigrants’ narrative identities, which were disrupted by movement, can now be re-constructed and re-circulated in this cybernetic space. Such retelling of the narratives can eventually have an impact on the way in which the immigrants live their real lives in the real spaces that they occupy.

Examples of Immigrant Identity Narratives on the Internet

It is now useful to turn to some examples of how the cybernetic space of the Internet is being mobilized and shaped by the voices of Indian immigrants on the Web. Making a decision about what could be considered to be a reasonable set of texts to examine is one of the challenges of conducting research on the discursive space of the Internet. Surely with the proliferation of texts, and the specific qualities of the text such as its hypertextuality, it is never quite clear what is a reasonable number of texts to analyze or where to begin. Mitra and Cohen (1999) have suggested that it is possible to begin with a text that appears to have a fair amount of purchase among the potential readers of the text and then follow links from that texts up to a pre-determined (often limited to three) set of distances, or “degrees of separation,” from the text. Given that there are thousands of web sites that fall within the general rubric of “web sites by and about Indians,” I have chosen to draw on examples from the starting point of a web site called Non Residents Indians Online (available at: http://www.nriol.com/).

As the name of the web site suggests, this page caters to the needs of the Non Resident Indian community and it also appears to keep itself updated and is a “live” and “active” site unlike other web sites that often tend to initiate themselves well but do not remain updated, active and live. It also needs to be stated that what follows in this essay is not as much an analysis of the cited web site but more of an exposition of some of the textual representational strategies that are used in the web site, and its related links, to produce the immigrant identity narratives in cybernetic space using several different voice.

The web site offers different sets of voices that the NRI can access or produce. First, the site acts as an institutional voice that immigrants can turn to for the various news items that make up the experience of living in a new land. One of the strategies used by the institutional voice is to offer news that would weave together the issues that could be of significance to the NRI. Consequently, the news stories include narratives that attempt to tie together elements that “hail” the Netizen both as an Indian as well as someone who is geographically distant from India[vii]. In most cases the news stories are carefully selected to address issues that would fit in with the conflicting identity of the potential reader. For example, in narrating the story of an Indian movie, Lagaan, making it to the American Oscar competition in 2002, the voice of NRIOL attempts to make salient what could be of interest to the Non Resident Indian who traditionally does not find the prevalence of Indian culture and artifacts in the mainstream cultural institutions of the West. Thus even though the story is drawn from an institutional source, the NRIOL page selects the story to be highlighted in its portal offering the reader an opportunity to rethink the reader’s identity in terms of being an Indian placed in America with respect to the fact that an Indian artifact can now find exposure in the American cultural space (available at: http://www.nriol.com/content/snippets/snippet725.html). This is particularly important since the mainstream cultural institutions of the West have typically not fulfilled the needs of immigrants from India. The lack of news about India, or the absence of Indian cultural artifacts on television and film theaters in America, leads Indians to seek out other spaces where that need could be fulfilled, and the cybernetic space of NRIOL begins to offer that through such news stories.

What is also important to note about the news stories on NRIOL is the fact that they represent a selection process that constantly attempts to create a discursive space where the NRI could feel comfortable since the multiple identity narratives can coexist in such spaces and around such stories and discourses. Using material from the mainstream media, the NRIOL page represents a recombinant discourse that carefully selects the relevant and preferred stories from various sources to create a safe place for the NRI identities. This is an important textual characteristic since the NRIOL does not claim to be a news reporter, but more of a news collator using a very specific ideological strategy to collate the news from traditional and recognizable institutional sources with the singular purpose of creating a zone of discursive comfort for the immigrants.

In this discursive comfort zone the immigrants can begin to find connections with a place they left behind. What is of particular significance is the fact that the connections with the far-away place of origin are established while placed in a geographic space that has little resemblance with the “old” place. It can be argued that the opportunity to read news about the place of origin could be found in a library as well and the technology of the Web only makes it more convenient to access it. However, that convenience is not to be underestimated. It is precisely the convenience of entering the virtual space created by the discourses about India that makes the Internet so powerful. It is possible to create a new dwelling place around the computer where the dweller can simultaneously live in the “real” foreign land as well as in the “virtual” old country[viii]. This is precisely the direction that Heim (1993) suggests for the development of the ideal virtual reality. Within that ideal the virtual will be able to reproduce the real with all the various characteristics of the real, particularly the human element. In the case of the NRIOL web site, however, that re-creation of the real is not restricted to the mobilizing of institutional voices only, but NRIOL also provides a discursive forum for individual voices that also attempt to recreate the old space. It is useful to examine some of these voices and how they create their version of the virtual space.

The voices of the individuals can be found in different segments of the NRIOL web site beginning with the link to “articles.” The link to “articles” available from the portal page offers, “listing of articles featured exclusively on NRI Online (available at: http://www.nriol.com/content/articles/).” On this page are listed articles such as, “Diwali – A integral part of American Culture (available at: http://www.nriol.com/content/articles/article55.html),” “India languishes while Indians abroad succeed. Why? (available at: http://www.nriol.com/content/articles/article20.html)” and “What we can expect from President Clinton's visit to India? (available at: http://www.nriol.com/content/articles/article27.html.)” These articles offer the area of congruence between the Indian past and the immigrant present by focusing on the ways in which the two identity narratives overlap. Consider for instance the following excerpt from an article that poses the question about identity and practice as Indians struggle with the reality and consequences of immigration:

Whatever happened to the togetherness and camaraderie? My friend's cousin recently visited US and where he tried to locate his another long lost cousin also in the US. With tremendous effort, he located the place and rang the doorbell. The person, whom he has not seen for years, responded rudely stating that in America it is not proper manners to visit anyone without prior announcement and consent. Back in villages and small towns in India, where globalised sophistication has not permeated to any degree, even in spite of the all pervading cable television, one can visit anybody in the neighbourhood without a cue. In case of a function like wedding in a household, the entire village would give a helping hand in arranging and conducting the event. Such courtesies are embedded in this country's cultural fabric. But why are we becoming cold and unfriendly? (available at: http://www.nriol.com/content/articles/article38.html)

In statements such as this, the authors use their personal voice to talk out issues that are critical and need to be resolved as the immigrant faces a crisis of identity. Since identity and location can be intimately connected, the resolution of such crisis could be found in the identification of cybernetic spaces where the different voices can be uttered.

Furthermore, these articles also represent the voices of individuals who are not speaking for a particular institution, but are most often speaking for themselves and through their discourse creating a space that has elements of two geographic locations. This discourse thus creates the cybernetic space where the body, in reality located in a foreign land, connects with the virtual location of India. Very often the discourses represent personal points of views but which hypertextually create the dwelling space where the different identities can coexist and remain in harmony with each other. This discursive space is also often considered a safe place for immigrants to speak candidly about the issues important to them[ix]. To be sure, both the factors – the ability to speak in a safe place – produce the condition that no other technologies have been able to create for the immigrant.

This tendency to be able to speak in a safe place is also mobilized by the web site through the link called, “20 questions,” where NRIs are invited to respond to a series of questions and thus create a “profile” for themselves that can be seen by other visitors to the web site (available at: http://www.nriol.com/community/20q/). This space is populated by about one hundred and fifty NRIs spanning all parts of the globe from Australia to Zimbabwe. In the responses to the questions, the participants of the quiz maintain their strong ties with India as witnessed in response to the item, “Do you plan to return to India and settle down?” Participants respond to this query saying things like:

I would like to return and I will settle in Hyderabad (available at: http://www.nriol.com/community/20q/20q128.html)

Yes. Pune, Bangalore, Chennai or Cochin (available at: http://www.nriol.com/community/20q/20q121.html)

Yes ofcourse. I will go back home and stay in my home town Dahod, Gujarat (available at: http://www.nriol.com/community/20q/20q115.html)

At this time no way to settle down. But if to live in India I prefer Gujarat (Vadodara) (available at: http://www.nriol.com/community/20q/20q108.html)

Yes, after 5-10 years, to Bangalore (available at: http://www.nriol.com/community/20q/20q94.html)

As evidenced in these few quotations the speakers are able to articulate their point of view in the cybernetic space and thus connect with others who also feel the same way as well as create a sense of space where the present foreign reality can be balanced with the virtual India that has been left behind and will soon be returned to. The NRIOL web site, using the opportunities provided by the Web, is able to mobilize these identity narratives and place them in cybernetic space for immigrants to access and use. This is a significant achievement because it has moved the dwelling place of these immigrants from the immigrant neighborhoods to one common virtual place that now becomes the dwelling place for the people. It is also in this dwelling place that immigrants can unabashedly flaunt their identity narratives and say things such as, “Even outside India...our strength is UNITY. So stay united. Smile always when you see a fellow Indian (available at: http://www.nriol.com/community/20q/20q92.html).” In such statements the immigrants demonstrate how it is necessary to create the shared space which begins with the voices that are uttered in the discursive space of the NRIOL web site.

While it is possible to continue to explore other statements in the NRIOL web site or other similar sites (see, e.g., a site called, “Indolink: The best of both worlds” available at: http://www.indolink.com/) the textual examples cited in this paper help to demonstrate that the Internet is increasingly providing a safe virtual space where the identity narratives of immigrants can reside in concord with each other. In creating these narratives, and being able to utter it, the immigrants are producing the cybernetic space made up of the physical location in a distant land and the virtual tethering to India accessed on the computer screen. The ability to voice oneself in this space could reduce the burden of immigration and produce the benefit of creating a new dwelling space where conflicting identity narratives and experiences can live in unison. As suggested earlier, the production of this dwelling place changes the “ethos[x]” of being an immigrant and could have far reaching implications on the immigrant experience, particularly in an age where being an immigrant is becoming increasingly easy and common. What is lost with physical immigration can now be recouped in the cybernetic space of the Internet as more immigrants find and produce these spaces.

Conclusion

In conclusion I would suggest several provisional claims and corresponding research questions. First, the preliminary evidence from the NRIOL data suggests that there is a concerted effort at hand by a marginal group to voice their unique interests and concerns. The technology has also made it possible to produce these voices in concert using the advantages of hypertext to connect the voices together. As a consequence of this process of voicing, an unique cybernetic space is being produced which is created at the point of convergence of the virtual discursive space on the Net and the real spaces occupied by people who are geographically marginalized. Second, the cybernetic space is considered a secure and safe place where the in-group discourse can include issues that might not be uttered in other spaces. As pointed out elsewhere in the discussion of different valences of discourse on the Internet, a cybernetic space such as the NRIOL offers the opportunity of creating a cyber-community where the in-group discourse provides the glue that holds the members together in the virtual space even though their geographic locations might be distant from each other (Mitra, 1997a, 1997b). Thirdly, as a consequence of living in the virtual dwelling space of the Internet, the real life experience of the people who populate such places can be transformed as well. Perhaps living in the virtual spaces such as NRIOL can reduce many of the identity angst experienced due to immigration. The possibility of producing and sustaining identity narratives in the virtual it could be possible to better negotiate the identity in real life. Given that immigrants have to constantly negotiate conflicting identity narratives and consequent real life experiences, the virtual space could offer the zone of comfort where the traditional identity narratives can be told more readily. This is particularly important within the current global climate where acts of terrorism and other trans-national violence leads to the tension between the need to produce a new identity in the place of adoption as well retain elements of identity built around the place of origin. Unfortunately, the present state of the world sometimes makes it untenable to flaunt the residual identity narratives thus constantly creating an ontological tension for immigrants. Perhaps the cybernetic space would be where that tension can be relieved. Thus the third consequence where the real life experience of living in a “foreign” land is eased by experiencing the virtual “native” land is particularly important.

In many ways, the third consequence – the ability to negotiate the real by virtue of the cyber – can have far reaching implications on the immigrant experience. Spaces such as NRIOL can create an immigrant ethos where the immigrant can be comfortable. This comfort is first related to the way in which the atomized immigrant individual finds virtual connections that do not exist in the real. However, the notion of comfort is also related to specific cultural memories that can be recreated in the virtual. Technology has always offered ways of creating and sustaining cultural memories around specific discourses that are available in the public sphere (see, e.g., Hasian, 2001). The cybernetic space produced around web sites such as NRIOL can enhance the creation and circulation of cultural memories since the voices in the virtual discursive space contain traces of identity narratives that are intimately connected with the histories of the people, the real places they came from as well as the real places they occupy. These narratives can eventually make up the cultural memories that will help to give a sense of belongingness for immigrants as they, and their children, live their life in a different land. These narratives are particularly important since they represent personal and individual histories that are not refracted by institutional ideology. Perhaps in these multitudes of discourse a new immigrant ethos will emerge which can eventually have an influence of the cultures of the country of adoption so that a new sense of cultural intermingling can be produced around several cybernetic spaces that both immigrants and natives occupy. Thus the question remains: How will living in the cybernetic space made up of virtual zones such as NRIOL and real location in Arkansas alter the cultural memories of immigrants?

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