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Romance Through Digital Avatars: Online Courtship, Representation and “Catfishing” Amongst Irregular Female Migrants in Sabah

Vilashini Somiah (2023) — New Media in the Margins

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-7141-9_4 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Book Chapter
Country:   Singapore
Tags:   Agency, Catfishing, Digital Agency, Digital Avatars, Female Migrants, Irregular Female Migrants, Irregular Migrants, Marginalisation, Online Courtship, Online Romance, Sabah, Social Media, Victim Experience, Young Adults
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Synopsis

            
This chapter explores how irregular young female migrants in Sabah, who face local ostracism and exclusion from social spaces, use digital avatars to conduct multiple online romances described as catfishing. It interprets these alternative digital lives as a means of regaining some control over personal narratives and relationships when offline agency is constrained. The topic is online identity and precarious migration rather than a measured study of financial romance fraud, so it should not be summarized as evidence about scam prevalence, losses, or offender tactics. The available extract offers only brief insights and does not report participant numbers, recruitment, data collection, analysis, or relationship outcomes, making the empirical scope and transferability impossible to assess.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The text identifies a broader Malaysian research gap: scholarship on new-media use among marginalised communities is “largely nascent” and tends to emphasise access and short-term benefits rather than deeper real-world effects. The chapter contributes brief insight into irregular female migrants’ online romances and catfishing, but the supplied text does not indicate an established evidence base specifically on this population or practice.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
The supplied text characterises the chapter as an exploration of irregular female migrants in Sabah. It examines how young adults, ostracised locally and excluded from social spaces, engage in multiple online romances using digital avatars, a practice described as “catfishing.” The overview interprets alternative digital lives as a way to regain control over personal narratives and considers the place of online romances within precarious daily routines. No sampling, data-collection, or analytic procedure is reported in the supplied extract.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The chapter is described only as providing “brief insights,” suggesting a bounded case-study contribution rather than a comprehensive account. The supplied text does not provide the chapter’s participant numbers, recruitment, data sources, time frame, analytic procedure, or evidence about relationship outcomes. Consequently, the scope, transferability, and whether avatar use involves deception, fraud, mutual role-play, or other forms of online self-representation cannot be assessed from the available text.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Further research is needed on online spaces used by marginalised and “Othered” Malaysian communities, including how digital media can provide agency while also reproducing exclusion. For this topic, future work should examine irregular female migrants’ avatar-based romances beyond the brief insights described here, using clearly reported methods and attention to the effects of these relationships.

          

              

    
    

        
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