I last tried living outside Australia in 2005. A decade isn’t a long time in the scope of human history, but for the expatriate – or one, anyway – it was entirely different era. After I moved to the UK, it was much easier to cut oneself adrift from events at home.

Britain’s media was then mostly parochial. Australia is only of intermittent interest. I was unfortunate enough to be there when England won the Ashes in 2006. Then, naturally, there was a lot of delighted reporting on the losers’ anguish. Apart from that, the stories I can remember were either about cruelty to refugees (received with approval or dismay, depending on the newspaper) celebrity hi-jinks, or how nice it might be to emigrate to a sunny country.

Under the circumstances it was quite easy to simply begin inhabiting everyday life where I was. I began acquiring certain kinds of knowledge as if by osmosis: about Premier League standings, Conservative party leadership tensions, and the narrative arcs of soap operas.

More by default than by design, the Australian everyday was displaced by quotidian England. The pubs, the papers and the people remoulded me with distressing speed. When I called home I would be informed that my accent and idioms were changing: “You sound like a pom.”

Losing the everyday world of home was once, for many, simply the cost of migration. The sense of loss that can come from that was evidenced in the slightly desperate nationalistic pantomime that characterised parts of London’s Aussie expat culture.

In the midst of one of its booms, the city was then crowded with my countrymen, some of whom would gather in the chain pubs which attempted to reproduce a semblance of life down under. What they created instead was a perpetual Australia Day, where people competed in living down to brash and boozy stereotypes.

If you went to the Walkabout, there was always the risk you’d get fed up with the nightly rendition of Khe Sanh and ask that regular with the Southern Cross tattoo why he had bothered coming here in the first place. Better to just go to your local, and let your accent slowly fade.

What about social media? It existed, of course, but the sector was then dominated by riotous, messy, joyous MySpace. Some of my friends may have been on it, but my older relatives certainly weren’t, and this was long before many news organisations thought they should take social media seriously.

It was easy to skip reading the news on websites, too. Syndication existed, and helped me acquire an ever-growing archive of Radio National podcasts without acquiring the habit of listening to them.

I returned to Australia in mid-2007, restored my vowels to their rightful shape, and got back into Australian life. Then, two years ago, I moved overseas again – this time to the west coast of the US.

Somehow, this time, I am as involved in the everyday world of Australian politics and culture as I ever was. Indeed, some days it feels like I never left.

It could be because the cultural world of a relatively new part of my host nation of immigrants is more open, less entrenched, and less transformative of the newcomer than the UK. Personally, I think the real reason is that technological changes have made a cosmopolitan frame of mind not only easier to maintain, but difficult to avoid.

Digital media more insistently (and mostly successfully) beckons you back into the everyday world of the country you left behind. Around lunchtime on the west coast, the tweets, status updates, email alerts, app notifications and the rest of Australia’s tomorrow begin to arrive.

Improved bandwidth and the prevalence of video archiving by broadcasters mean that you can follow up on some of the stories that reach you in this way by watching Australian news and current affairs broadcasts – something that wasn’t quite as easy in my last period of exile.

It’s not the same as the ambience of Australian news when you’re living there, but it may just mean that you get to be a bit more selective. As a consequence, it may even be that you are able to see some things a little more clearly.

More importantly than the news, the photos, invitations and life events shared by family and friends on social media platforms with a near-universal uptake (I mean Facebook) offer a constant reminder of the relationships of care, and the affective investments you have in the place you left.

It’s not necessary to “still call Australia home” when home follows you around, and at any time you can pull it out of your pocket.

This is not an experience exclusive to emigrants, but like some other things about everyday life, emigration can help pull it into focus. Any active social media user inhabits an everyday world imbricated with international news and friendships, other cultures and even other languages.

It may not all be sunshine and roses, but that just means that even the parameters of our conflicts and disagreements are less provincial.

Of course I am speaking about migration from a privileged perspective. Just over a week ago, Mawuna Remarque Koutonin reminded us that the very distinction between “expat” and “immigrant” is racially loaded.

Not only do Anglophone white people get a better reception than people of colour and non-English speakers in both of the countries I have discussed, not only was I able to come in the front door and feel secure about my tenure here, but I currently have access to a suite of technologies that enable me to inhabit two worlds. Not everyone does.

It’s also certainly true that this kind of double presence is not the preserve of the rich or the white. People in every immigrant community here have smartphones, and some – especially Latino communities in the US context — have extensive media industries dedicated to serving their sectional interest. Indeed, those longstanding US expatriate communities from Central America are probably best-placed to tell us what having one foot here and another at home can afford us, and how we can make it work.

On the cosmopolitanism of the ancient Stoics, Martha Nussbaum says they thought we lived “in two communities – the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration”. We don’t have to be social media evangelists, nor look past the drawbacks of its demand for constant contact, to see that at its best, this is what social media offers to help us do.

It also offers the reverse: living somewhere far from home, but sharing in the arguments and aspirations of the place we left behind. The kind of citizenship that goes along with that can’t be codified, or taken for granted: it’s a matter of improvisation. But we can be grateful for having the means to try.