Envisioning Transbordered Algorithmic Identities Across African and Asian Immigrants’ Digital Narratives - Article reuse guidelines

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious

Examines how African and Asian immigrants (re)present identities and experiences through TikTok digital narratives, showing how creators’ storytelling illustrates “transbordered algorithmic identities.” Develops the concept by extending BlackCrit and AsianCrit, and Ubuntu and Jeong to frame algorithmic identities as community-building across identities and geographies while challenging fixed ideas of home, place, rootedness, and memories of belonging. Concludes with implications for research and teaching.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Research focus and concept of transbordered algorithmic identities

Methods and dataset

Analysis of 100 TikTok posts

Findings

Two approaches to transbordered algorithmic identities

Context and implications

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–19 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251403502 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Envisioning Transbordered Algorithmic Identities Across African and Asian Immigrants’ Digital Narratives Vaughn W. M. Watson Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University Jin Kyeong Jung Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Texas Tech University Joel E. Berends Sandra Boateng Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University Lindsey Allene Hall Department of English, Grand Valley State University We examined how African and Asian immigrants (re)present the interplay of identities and experiences across digital narratives composed and shared on TikTok. We found content creators’ digital narratives to be illustrative of their transbordered algorithmic identities. We drew on and extended BlackCrit and AsianCrit and African and Asian onto-axio-epistemologies Ubuntu and 정 (Jeong) to contextualize and define transbordered algorithmic identities as leveraging social media to build community with those who share experiences across identities and geographies; complicating static notions of home, place, rootedness, and memories of being, with, and among; and navigating discursive and geographic borders while negotiating presentations of individuals shaped by online interactions and encounters with digital algorithms that curate content, suggest connections, and analyze online practices. We conclude with implications for research and teaching. Keywords: immigration/immigrants, identities, equity, artificial intelligence, qualitative research, social media, algorithm/ algorithmic, TikTok, race An adult son, posting to TikTok, used voiceover to narrate a video he titled,“An Immigrant Story: My Pops and I.” The son filmed his father today, hair peppered with gray, sitting on a couch, flipping through times past. The father recalled through close-ups in a photo album still images of himself, younger then, newly arrived to the United States, standing casually on a sidewalk across the street from the Out of Town News kiosk, opened in Harvard Square in 1955, closed in 2019 as newspaper and magazine readers increasingly preferred digital media, and redeveloped in 2023 as the Cambridge Visitor Information Center (Harvard Square, 2024). The father, darker hair then, smiled in photographs in front of the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge. The father, today, recalled to his son from the couch that he came to the United States by himself—“I don’t speak English at all. No friend, no relative. Because I want to give my kids a good education.” Finally, the father shared, as his son recorded, the reuniting with his family following their arrival to the United States 4 years after he did, moments of tension and joy in those times before FaceTime and Zoom narrowed physical distance. The father shared: “When I goto the airport to pick you up, you just look at me like,‘Don’t know me. Who’s this?’” The son responded,“My dad made the ultimate sacrifice. . . . [W]hile our relationship isn’t perfect, the threads that bind us are stronger than the ones that tear us.” Extending our ongoing work attending to the lived experiences of immigrant youth and young adults across communicative practices, technologies, and settings, we examined 100 such posts on TikTok, 50 by Black African immigrant and 50 by Asian immigrant content creators. Specifically, we asked: “How do Black African immigrant Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reprod

FAQs

What is the document’s central concept of transbordered algorithmic identities?

Transbordered algorithmic identities are defined through two approaches: using social media to build community across identities and geographies, and navigating discursive/geographic borders while negotiating presentations shaped by digital algorithms.

What platform and data does the study analyze?

The study examines digital narratives composed and shared on TikTok, analyzing 100 posts—50 by Black African immigrant content creators and 50 by Asian immigrant content creators.

How does the study treat identity and place in relation to immigrant narratives?

It complicates static notions of home, place, rootedness, and memories of being, by showing how narratives and algorithmic curation shape how individuals are represented and connect across borders.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious