Nowadays, the information age, postmodernist and postcolonial societies have to cope with a new emerged factor that may have a very important impact upon people’s imaginary and self-representation: virtual network communications and the mass media. This new element has been bringing about massive migration movements due to the high speed at which information flows or sweep throughout the globe and its power to give rise to ambitious projects and prospects.
This new ebb of migration differs from the old types of migration in many ways. With the development of technologies and communications, ethnic groups can keep in touch despite physical distance and time. Hence, the amount of information that a migrant can obtain before moving to a host society, thanks to technologies, may boost his or her opportunities to be succesfully adapted. However, this information that flows through mass media technologies may be either propaganda or false images or texts of the ideal world that western societies pretend to be. Doubtless technologies and information are even shaping our institutions, and therefore, re-shaping constantly our identities.
According to some classic theories of migration, economic and rational factors are the main reasons that a migrant take into consideration in order to move from his or her country of origin. However, those kinds of theories do not contemplate many subjective human beliefs and neither do they contemplate the power of ethnicity and technologies.
References
*Information Age. (2011, May 6). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:31, May 12, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Information_Age&oldid=427691311
* Human migration. (2011, May 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:38, May 12, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Human_migration&oldid=428651274
*CASTELLS. M. La Era de la Informacion (Vol1) 2003. ALIANZA
Filed under: Anthropology 
