Transnational Platform-Living: Brazilian Content Creators on YouTube and Digital Labour in Portugal
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/rlec.7033Keywords:
migration, digital labour, YouTube, content creators, digital platformsAbstract
This article examines how Brazilian migrant content creators in Portugal transform migratory experience into digital labour on YouTube, acting as mediators of migration under conditions of infrastructural dependency. It starts from the premise that producing migration-related content entails articulating personal trajectories, audience expectations, platform norms, visibility metrics, and monetisation opportunities. The study adopts a qualitative approach, combining the online observation of Brazilian creators’ channels in Portugal with a material-discursive analysis of the platform’s technical, normative, and discursive infrastructures. The analysis considers elements such as YouTube Creators, channel monetisation policies, Community Guidelines, and advertiser-friendly content guidelines, understanding them as devices that guide, shape, and regulate creators’ practices. The findings suggest that the migratory experience becomes a recurring subject of content production, organised primarily around two axes: the documentation of everyday life and the provision of practical guidance on migration, including topics such as employment, documentation, housing, and adaptation to life in Portugal. At the same time, these productions are permeated by demands for regularity, authenticity, performance, and compliance with the platform’s algorithmic and commercial logics. The article contributes to bringing migration studies, digital communication, and platform labour into closer dialogue, demonstrating that the migrant condition and the condition of being digital worker can be understood together through the sociotechnical mediations that shape the production, circulation, and monetisation of migration-related content on YouTube.
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