key: cord-0059362-bxyumwuo authors: Marino, Sara title: Mediating the ‘Refugee Crisis’: An Introduction date: 2020-08-31 journal: Mediating the Refugee Crisis DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-53563-6_1 sha: 58a82fca5b16a63b4713e172acf63e360a5a42ea doc_id: 59362 cord_uid: bxyumwuo This chapter introduces the reader to the key concepts, theoretical underpinnings and case studies constituting the backbone of this book. It provides the geopolitical context in which the analysis is situated and explains why technologies can offer a rich entry point for a more comprehensive understanding of the different forces at play in the so-called refugee crisis. A summary of the book’s structure is also provided in an attempt to emphasise the connection between technologies as strategies of political intervention, as tactics of resistance and as techniques of political contestation. mainly discussed as an emergency concerning the management of migration along Europe's outer borders and thus mainly requiring military interventions able to contain and suppress a largely unwanted migration. In reality, however, a closer look at the inflections of Europe's global mobility regime (De Genova 2017) suggested that, far from being exceptional measures addressing a situation of emergency, the reintroduction and reinforcement of border controls were in fact calling into question the very concept of Europe as a stable political, social and humanitarian project. This book deals with the technological mediations of Europe's political and humanitarian response to the ongoing 'crisis' that has currently entered its tenth year since the start of the conflict. The reasons for focusing on technologies as key conceptual framework are threefold. Firstly, my interest in the role that technologies have played in mediating the 'refugee crisis' originates from the fact that mediated practices and discourses have been central to the way European governments have elaborated, communicated and intervened on the ongoing influx of migrants and refugees. Second, technologies have been instrumental in the way migrants and refugees have connected, more or less successfully, with Europe's mobility infrastructures and services. Third, information and communication technologies have fundamentally shaped the way humanitarian organisations, activists and citizens have responded to the political and moral absenteeism of the Union's member states in an attempt to promote the legal and moral duty to safeguard human life. In considering these aspects, the book recognises the European border space as a communicative entity shaped by a performative network of technologies used to exercise, resist and contest sovereign power in both material and symbolic ways. Theoretically, the analysis presented in this book engages with three lines of enquiry that are strongly interrelated. The first strand of scholarship discusses the tension between humanitarianism and securitisation that has characterised the governance of forced migration and border policing since the 'crisis' in 2015 became a cause of concern in the European political and public space. The first indications that a 'tragedy of epic proportions' 1 was unfolding at Europe's outer borders occurred in the aftermath of what was classified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as the deadliest shipwreck ever recorded in the Mediterranean Sea. 2 In April 2015, an overcrowded vessel capsized in Libyan waters south of the Italian island of Lampedusa killing more than eight hundred migrants and refugees. Only twenty-eight survivors were rescued and brought to Italy, where the scale and horror came into even sharper focus in the immediate days following the tragedy. Rage spread across Italy and the then Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, encouraged member states to collectively share the responsibility for a crisis concerning the Union in its entirety. When interviewed on possible courses of action, Renzi suggested that human traffickers-'whom he repeatedly compared to slave traders' 3 (The Guardian 2015)-had come to represent the key target of Europe's migration response. From this point onwards, and in response to the increasing number of migrants and refugees fleeing war in 2015 and 2016, the governance of migration seemed to oscillate between two main reactions. One was to strengthen the EU internal and external borders in order 'to manage migration more effectively and protect the internal freedom of movement within the Schengen area'. 4 A second approach was designed to protect the lives of refugees and migrants by identifying and eradicating the activities of people traffickers. Within this scenario, while the UNHCR encouraged the Union to move beyond border enforcement to consider instead longer-term solutions such as more robust search and rescue operations, resettlement schemes and the provision of legal and safer alternatives to prevent migrants from resorting to smugglers, 5 the European Commission proceeded quite differently. In defining Europe's external borders as a shared responsibility, European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans identified the creation of an integrated system of border management as a strategic resource for the identification of weaknesses and for the delivery of more efficient solutions to the geopolitical pressures exercised by the 'refugee crisis'. In reiterating this position, European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, discussed the need for a new 'Border Package' as a response to citizens' demands for more security and the need for higher standards of border management. 6 Both positions made very clear that the united front against migration mainly consisted of a 'politics of containment' (Garelli and Tazzioli 2019) . The paradox that Aas and Gundhus (2015) identify as the incongruity between care, the protection of migrants from smugglers and citizens' safety, and control, the fortification of policies that make migrating even more precarious (De Genova 2017), is well reflected in the transformation of borders into a sophisticated techno-mediated architecture of territorial sovereign power. This represents one of the key arguments of this book. The second strand of literature that this book engages with builds upon the link that is being made between the securitisation, humanitarianisation and militarisation of borders to emphasise the extent to which top-down governmental bordering strategies adopted by state authorities increasingly rely on digital technologies. The contemporary European migration regime is datafied and digitalised (Leurs and Smets 2018) . Europe's techno-mediated infrastructure and architecture of power increasingly rely on an 'assemblage' (Madianou 2019) consisting of biometric registrations, artificially intelligent border systems, predictive analytics of social media activity, surveillance cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) designed to identify, monitor and control migratory routes and individuals. In this respect, the transformation of Europe into a cyber Fortress (Guild et al. 2008 ) has proceeded gradually but steadily. Since 2016, when Frontex-the European Border and Coast Guard Agency-was established, 7 the protection of the EU's external borders has continuously justified major increases in funding. A new integrated border management fund was identified as a priority for the EU 2021-2027 budget, where the funding for migration and border management was almost tripled. 8 The new fund, which is designed to support the deployment of state-of-theart IT equipment for the identification of smugglers and for the delivery of search and rescue operations, justifies once again the need for more border guards to be 'activated' in emergency situations. Within this scenario, the delivery of search and rescue operations should be contextualised within the hyper-militarisation and technologisation of borders. This became painfully clear in 2014 when Operation Mare Nostrum, the search and rescue project led by the Italian Coast Guard, was replaced by the Frontex-led Operation Triton. The decision was met with mixed reactions over concerns that the more limited Frontex mission would have prioritised discouraging migrants from crossing the sea rather than supporting rescue operations (Andersson 2017) . Both examples, however, speak of the convergence of two trends: on the one hand, the interplay of military and humanitarian ideologies as a justification for the adoption of force against the bodies of migrants; and, on the other hand, the militarisation of search and rescue operations signals the criminalisation of humanitarian assistance as facilitating the illegal arrival of refugees and migrants. Quite exemplary is the case of the search and rescue ship Aquarius which in 2018 became the object of an international dispute between Italy and Malta over who was responsible for allowing the ship to dock at their ports. The ship carrying 629 migrants was stranded off the coast of Libya and was left in a political impasse when both Malta and Italy refused to let the ship disembark on their shores. Under the hashtag #chiudiamoiporti (we are shutting the ports), Italy's then deputy prime minister and leader of the right-wing Lega party, Matteo Salvini, celebrated Italy's victory over its 'no' to human trafficking and illegal immigration. Using this event as a symbol of Italy's renewed territorial sovereignty over Europe's disregard for the pressure faced by the country, Salvini continued his march against humanitarian organisations. In this respect, his proposal to fine non-governmental organisations rescue boats for each migrant they disembark in Italy represented a further sign that the protection and rescue of human lives was indeed at the bottom of the government's priorities. 9 The techno-militarisation of borders points to the convergence of multiple forces that will be discussed in this volume. First, is the interconnectivity of different actors from political and border authorities to nonstate actors, private enterprises and humanitarian agencies, all capitalising on the power of technologies to deliver faster and more efficient responses to human displacement. Second, is the expansion of a system of global surveillance that further exacerbates the transformation of Europe into a geopolitical space where a few centimetres can make the difference between the exercise of a flexible and economically productive citizenship and the negation of identity as illegitimate, illegal and unworthy. Third, is the transformation of refugee and migrant identities into 'data subjects' where only those who are 'biometrically' readable and 'digitally' acceptable can be acknowledged as potential citizens in a very volatile and highly ambiguous political space. The third and final strand of literature expands on the identification of borders as technologies of surveillance to highlight different uses of technologies from the bottom-up perspective of everyday experiences of forced migrants and from the grassroots fringes of society that I identify in this book as pertaining to the tech for social good community. This aspect is what confers originality to the study presented in this book. More often than not, critical approaches to the 'refugee crisis' have focused their attention on the ethical, cultural and political challenges offered by technology use in contexts of surveillance and humanitarianism. More recently however, alternative accounts of migration and digital media have created a space where more productive understandings of mobility merge with the observation of what happens at the border, along the route from one border to another, and in-between these liminal spaces. Following this line of thought, I argue that the observation of technology use can offer a less theorised but indeed more productive lens with which we can look at how power can be contested and resisted. As mentioned, the book observes technology use as a productive entry point to investigate not just the relationship between borders and power but also the circulation of solidarity at the border and the experiences of digital connectivity in the lives of forced migrants through personal interviews and ethnographic work. In doing this, it rejects the identification of technologies as purely material objects and as mere extensions of human beings and, instead, emphasises their material, symbolic and highly performative roles. The relationship between mobilities and media has received considerable attention in the literature over the years. In particular, the new mobility paradigm developed by scholars John Urry and Mimi Sheller (2006) importantly recognises how present configurations of mobility are indeed characterised by the convergence of physical travel and modes of communication that require the observation of the political, social, cultural and economic forces allowing or impeding movement. This was reiterated by media and communication scholar David Morley (2017) who expanded the original premises of the new mobility paradigm to include the material and symbolic infrastructures that either facilitate or contain movement, including their geopolitical dynamics and digital configurations. The need to consider how information and communication technologies (ICTs) have shaped the way migrants take control of their mobility and acquire a sense of agency has taken on a renewed interest in recent years. The emergence of the digital migration field of research introduced important contributions concerning the role played by (ICTs) within diasporic communities (Leurs and Smets 2018) . However, many have recognised the lack of research on the role played by ICTs in the lives of forced migrants in Europe or on their way to Europe (Leurs and Ponzanesi 2018) , with the exception of important contributions that will be amply discussed in Chapter 4. To these studies, the analysis offered in this book adds two more dimensions that I believe deserve further attention in the study of forced mobilities. First, the interplay between the notion of exile and the different performative uses that technologies embody at different stages of the journey to Europe. Second, the impact that refugees' mediatised practices of witnessing have on more mainstream representations of refugees. The analysis is prompted by a crucial question. Can technologies offer refugees a platform where power can be contested and where more inclusive spheres of representations can be envisaged? A final form of mediatisation is embodied by more humanitarian uses of technologies at the border, which represents an additional original focus that this book puts forward. The incorporation of such a focus meets the need to offer a more comprehensive and complex overview of the different technological mediations unfolding within the European space, above and beyond surveillance. Over the past few years, the structural, political and cultural shifts affecting nation states across the globe have caused an important change in the distribution of power relations among states and citizens. More specifically, opportunities for political and public participation are said to have increased with the advent of technologies used to connect, express, act and create alliances. There are two trends that this book considers as central to the adoption of technologies for the delivery of social good, which represents the key argument of Chapter 5. The first trend is the renewed interest in doing good that Kaarina Nikunen (2019) contextualises as ingrained in the evolution of modernity as reinforcing individualism on the one hand, and as encouraging self-determination as a political and humanitarian project on the other. As responsibilities have shifted from social and political institutions to the individual, more personalised forms of participation have emerged. The second trend is the rise of social entrepreneurs, social corporate responsibilities industries, and the private and the notfor-profit networks all willing to support remote acts of cooperation and volunteering, either independently or in collaboration with more institutionalised organisations. In the context here observed, these two trends have converged in what I call the tech for social good community, a diverse and highly heterogeneous network made of volunteers, CEOs, software developers, digital humanitarians, entrepreneurs and techies at large, all placing faith in the power of technologies to deliver solidarity and bring social change. In recognising the increasing popularity of digital social innovation and digital solidarity for the displaced, my analysis, in a way not before considered, asks in what ways these circuits of mediated solidarity can challenge Fortress Europe's techno-military infrastructure of power. Ultimately, the book proposes an alternative framework, a techno-mediated framework where the possibility of a counter-hegemonic project around a new idea of social justice for refugees can potentially be imagined. The book is divided into six chapters and outlines three different applications of technology as strategies of political intervention, as tactics of resistance, and as techniques of political contestation. The volume, in an original way, approaches the complexity of bordering practices through an historical analysis of what borders represent from a political and philosophical point of view. This excursus, which is addressed in Chapter 2, introduces the reader to some of the key ideas that form the backbone of my analysis: the historical interplay between identity and alterity; the construction of otherness; the us versus them rhetoric; and the scapegoating of specific categories of unwanted individuals as a constant in the evolution of humanity. In discussing the philosophical, political and technologically mediated foundations of Fortress Europe, this chapter advances a more holistic understanding of migration as an object of securitisation and provides the necessary contextual framework where today's architecture of security can be more comprehensively discussed. Chapter 3 looks more closely at the evolution of borders as institutions of sovereign power, as mechanisms of identity formation and as performances of denial. This distinction is considered central again to a more holistic understanding of the productive nature of borders and the materiality of their regimes. The chapter shows that European borders should be interrogated as sociopolitical constructions that are meant to divide a population of legalised citizens and privileged travellers from undeserving and unwelcome slices of humanity whose identity needs to be verified and authenticated before being accepted. As inherently performative, borders represent a fertile territory where performances of power and counterperformances of resistance coexist in often chaotic and unpredictable ways. The deployment of counter-performances of resistance is central to Chapter 4's considerations of technologies of and in exile. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugees living in London, this chapter questions whether refugees' digitally mediated practices can be observed as acts of resistance against the predominant narratives that monothematically place refugees as criminals or as victims within Fortress Europe. The discussion is broken down into two key macro-themes of research. Firstly, digital connectivity is analysed in the light of its material conditions and affordances (technologies in exile) pre-departure, during the journey and upon arrival in Europe. Secondly, the analysis moves onto observing the performative and symbolic dimensions of refugee connectivity (technologies of exile) to explore whether refugees' tactics of mediatised witnessing can open up spaces for more inclusive practices of visibility and engagement. Chapter 5 expands on the limitations of refugees' mediated practices of self-determination to look more closely at those grassroots initiatives that since 2015 have taken place within the tech community to support refugees and displaced communities. This chapter addresses the opportunities and challenges brought about by digital social innovation in an attempt to reflect on how impactful mediated solidarity can be in a situation where technologies are mainly used to subjectify, monitor and reduce refugees to repositories of data for surveillance and securitisation purposes. Drawing from interviews with tech and social entrepreneurs, volunteers and CEOs, I outline a new theoretical concept, 'mindful filtering', to critically examine the role of digital innovation and data in humanitarian practice. With this concept, I intend to contribute to an open debate that is still in its embryonic stages of critical thinking but one that nevertheless represents a useful entry point to begin to reconcile the ethics of data collection-one of the most problematic aspects of technologies for refugees-with the politics of solidarity. The final chapter discusses the complexities of what I call 'reactive networked activism' in relation to the alleged crisis of solidarity today and reflects on what we may learn from prioritising dialogue over the more rigid forms of protection of the space of Europe. Dialogue however, as I will discuss in Chapter 6, is a long process that demands empathy (not compassion) and requires affective citizenship: a practice of social responsibility where identities are seen as mobile and hybrid; where the ability to act differently is recognised as a value and not as a threat to political consensus; and where political membership is built and rebuilt in negotiation with each other, never defined once and for all. In emphasising the crucial role of solidarity as a form of resistance, this book puts forward some suggestions that the reader might find relevant within the political and economic climate originated in the aftermath of the COVID-19 global health emergency. As the book entered its final stages of revision, the rapid spread of coronavirus symptoms across borders announced a different kind of crisis demanding international coordination and support. Faced with the task of fighting an invisible virus, European and non-European governments turned to innovative tracing platforms and sophisticated surveillance tools to track movement, to identify and to isolate threats. These latest developments in health management raise substantial ethical dilemmas that we have yet to see fully accounted for, including the opaque uses of such technologies to monitor the movement of migrant populations and the risk of further exacerbating their vulnerability by propagating surveillance within already inadequate migration reception systems. How can the analysis offered in these pages help the reader navigate the complex and still blurred post-pandemic scenario? In examining the roots of political power, a set of analytical tools is offered in an attempt to deconstruct the relationship between policing and surveillance above and beyond the so-called refugee crisis . In scrutinising the mechanisms behind the identification of migrants as threats, the analysis helps us understand how matters of public health can serve as justification for the introduction of tighter border controls. In looking at ways in which the refugee body is datafied for security purposes, the book encourages us to remain vigilant to the intended and unintended consequences of bio-surveillance. Ultimately, as the world seems to retreat into a new and frightening pseudo-normality, this book invites us to remain open to more creative episodes of tolerance and acceptance. It is in its darkest moments that humanity always finds the courage to create more welcoming pathways and circuits of solidarity for all groups, communities and individuals. These pages suggest alternative ways we can reconstruct and remap traditional geographies of oppression while respecting, caring for and protecting every single voice. UN Secretary-General for International Migration and Development Peter Sutherland, and Director-General of the International Organization for Migration William Lacy Swing UNHCR welcomes EU Mediterranean plans, but says more needs to be done UN says 800 migrants dead in boat disaster as Italy launches rescue of two more vessels' The Guardian A summary of Europe's UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for International Migration and Development Peter Sutherland, and Director-General of the International Organization for Migration William Lacy Swing monitoring and supervisory role able to conduct risk analyses and vulnerability assessments. The 'right to intervene' was also discussed as a form of emergency support to member states. 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