Information and communication technologies and migrant intimacies: the case of Punjabi youth in Manila

This article examines how South–South migrants use information and communication technologies (ICTs) in negotiating their encounters with traditional cultural imaginaries of intimacy. It focuses on second-generation Punjabi Indian youth in the Philippine capital of Manila. Through an ethnographic approach, it unpacks how these migrants harness technologies to steer through two particular ideals about the end-goal of intimate relationships: the Punjabi notion of arranged marriage and the Filipino notion of love marriage. I characterise how the young Punjabis use ICTs to enact what I call a ‘temporarily resolution’ to their migrant double consciousness about intimacy. I also describe how this temporary resolution continues to be entwined with the wider dynamics of multicultural relations in the Philippines. Ultimately, I aim to better understand the role of ICTs in migrant intimacies, especially within the realities of multiculturalism in a postcolonial city in the Global South.