The growing mobility of people within and into the Asia Pacific region has created environments of increasing diversity as nations become hosts to both permanent and temporary multicultural societies. How do we begin to gauge the impact of mobility and multiculturalism on individuals and groups in this diverse region today? The authors of The Asia Pacific in the Age of Transnational Mobility turn to social media as a tool of inquiry to map how mobile subjects and minorities articulate their sense of community and identity. The authors see social media as a platform that allows users to document and express their individual and collective identities, sometimes in restrictive communication environments, while providing a sense of belonging and agency. They present original empirical work that attempts to help readers understand how mobile subjects who circulate in the Asia Pacific create a sense of community for themselves and articulate their ethnic, ideological and national identities.

As the age of social media progresses, the Asia Pacific, like the rest of the world, is experiencing an increase in cultural diversity and global connection. Those within the region are witnessing rapid social and cultural changes. As individuals and groups navigate through an increasingly mobile, transnational and multicultural ethnographic landscape, social media provides a sense of belonging for these networked communities.

Social media allows individuals and groups to map and redefine their evolving communal and national identities and thus form sometimes new, vibrant and necessary communities to help create individual and group belonging and agency. While creating a sense of belonging and agency in their respective homeland(s), individuals and groups are also able to connect to global networks. Recognising these layered and intertwined complexities governing societal and cultural cohesion, the authors in this collection each discuss the innate challenges of the social media era on culture, identity and social interaction. This original empirical work documents social media as a user platform for the expression of individual and collective identities.