Migrants’ Digital Practices in Anti-Deportation Strategies and Return Strategies

• In Event: Digital Border Practices

Abstract

Studies within migration and critical border studies have during the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ shown how migrants resist repressive border regimes. Some recent studies within STS have emphasized the role of ICT in these practices and argued that re reconfiguration of platform and electronic devices have strengthened the agency of migrants and thus provide an argument for the autonomy of migration. Most of such studies have looked at the flows coming from North Africa and the Middle East/Turkey and looked at migrants’ routes into Europe and investigated how the European border regime has sought to restrict access. In several European countries we today can identify a so-called paradigmatic shift which entails shifting the focus from integration of the migrants to deportation. In a country like Denmark the government recently changed the name of the social benefits available for refugees from an ‘integration benefit’ to a ‘return benefit’ and generally have put more actions into deporting refugees. A similar tendency can be found in Germany. This means, that potential deportees and undocumented migrants increasingly have had to develop survival strategies for if and when they are deported. Likewise are migrants starting to share information and strategies on how to return to Turkey and the Middle East. This paper offers some initial findings of online ethnography and ethnographic field-work in Denmark and Hamburg on how migrants individually and collectively use ICTs to both resist deportation but also develop strategies for survival. The paper also engages in a theoretical conceptualization of reverse mobility, which offers a supplement and/or challenge to the dominant understanding of rather linear migration flows.

Authors

• Martin Bak Jørgensen, University of Aalborg

• Leandros Fischer, University of Aalborg