“I try to find comfort in English, but it’s hard”: Exploring personal information management in multilingual contexts among voluntary migrants

Multilingualism is a widespread phenomenon that influences various life aspects, including information behavior. Despite its prevalence, personal information management (PIM) in multilingual contexts, defined as MPIM, remains underexplored. Through the lens of the information transition theory, this qualitative phenomenological study fills this gap by investigating a new framework that focuses on the intersection of PIM, multilingualism, and migration. Drawing from 16 semi-structured interviews with voluntary migrants in the higher education sector, we explore how the experience of multilingualism and migration shape MPIM practices and identify the affective aspects of this experience. Findings show that language choice in MPIM is an important part of one’s emotional and identity authenticity. MPIM choices are important for cultural integration and are linked with the length of stay in the host country as well as future plans. Language choices also differentiate professional and personal spheres, are audience-specific, and align with the context of information. These findings offer a nuanced understanding of MPIM, presenting a detailed analysis of its practices and associated challenges, and offering a framework of MPIM behavior in the context of migration. This study contributes to the field of information science research and offers theoretical and practical insights which can be used to inform practice utilization and the design of PIM platforms suitable for multilingual people.