Article Roots, Routes, and Routers Social and digital dynamics in the Jain diaspora Tine Vekemans Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Belgium. Correspondence: Tine.Vekemans@ugent.be. Abstract: In the past three decades, Jains living in diaspora have been instrumental in the digital boom of Jainism-related websites, social media accounts, and mobile applications. Arguably, the increased availability and pervasive use of different kinds of digital media impacts upon how individuals deal with their roots, e.g. it allows for greater contact with family and friends, but also with religious figures, back in India. It also impacts upon routes, e.g. it provides new ways for individual Jains to find each other, organize, coordinate, and put down roots in their current country of residence. Using extensive corpora of Jainism-related websites and mobile applications (2013–2018), and ethnographic data derived from participant observation, interviews and focus groups conducted in US, UK, and Belgian Jain communities (2014–2017), this article examines patterns of use of digital media for social and religious purposes by Jain individuals and investigates media-strategies adopted by Jain diasporic organizations. It attempts to explain commonalities and differences in digital engagement across different geographic locations by looking at differences in migration-history and lay-out of the local Jain communities. Keywords: Jainism; digital media; diaspora; migrant religion; digital religion 1. Introduction: 1.1 Connecting roots, routes, and routers This article, which draws from a broader research project 1 incorporating the analysis of corpora of websites (2013 and 2017) and mobile applications (2018) the and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the US, the UK, and Belgium (2014 - 2018), seeks to address the impact the rise of digital media has had in the way Jains that have settled outside India experience and practice their religion. As the title Roots, Routes, and Routers implies, this research article takes James Clifford’s 1997 volume titled ‘Routes’ as its starting point. In this influential collection of essays, Clifford makes the case for changing the focus of cultural studies from origins and stable belongings to migration and movement, or from roots to routes. With the addition of “routers” as a third dimension is meant to draw attention to the increased influence of digital media in cultural processes in general, and in the migrant and diaspora communities in particular. The fields of migration studies and diaspora studies address the balance of origins and movement, and grapple with the temporal dimensions of migration – subsequent instances of travel and migration, the development of new communities, the maintenance of old roots, and the severing or withering roots through subsequent generations. In the past two decades, a growing number of scholars of media and migration have argued that the increased role digital media have in many peoples’ lives today is especially relevant for individual migrants and migrant or diaspora communities (e.g. Appadurai 1996, Georgiou 2006, Tsagarousianou 2004, Nedelcu 2012; Scheifinger 2008: 242; Helland 2007, Balaji 2018: xix). What is more, some researchers have argued that the impact of digital media has been significant enough to 1 The research-project “Digital religion in a transnational context: Representing and practicing Jainism in diasporic communities” was made possible by a grant from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). It was coordinated and supervised by Prof. Dr. Eva De Clercq at University of Ghent, Belgium.