Why studing migrations and diaspora through popular culture 

Popular culture was praised as “peripheral geography” already in 1947, when an authoritative figure such as the by then President of the Association of American Geographers, John K. Wright, claimed its importance as a source for understanding “geographical imagination”. Nowadays, notwithstanding this early endorsement, popular culture seems still to be a “terra incognita” of geographical research. This special issue, connected with the work of the Study Group “Media and Geography”, of the Association of Italian Geographers, is aimed at demonstrating how media and popular culture can be useful in the understanding of complex phenomenona such as border-crossing, migrations and diaspora. 

Keywords: popular geopolitics, postcolonial studies, media studies, migration, diaspora.