Migrants’ Digital Resistance Practices in the Greek Territory and Borderland

• In Event: Digital Border Practices

Abstract

Recent work within STS has shown that borders are not fixed geographical entities but a set of complex practices in a constant state of becoming. Simultaneously, migrants’ engagement with ICTs reveals a wide spectrum of resistance practices that involves border crossing, survival and settlement practices in various territories and scales. These human and nonhuman encounters entail innovative uses of technology that subvert dominant perceptions of migrants as victims and borders as solid and static deathscapes. This presentation is based on findings from field research conducted in Greece (mainland and borderland) during the period April 2018 – January 2019 and aims to discuss how migrants’ digital practices generate new migration subjects and spaces as well as materialities of resistance. Focusing on migrants’-ICTs assemblages, we examine the emergence of unbordering practices, the creation of crucial solidarity networks and the risks and limitations that emerge when using ICTs. We explore the way these practices reenact migration, question power relations with reference to various aspects such as those of class, gender, age or body ability. Moreover, we investigate how migrants are entangled with multiple forms of digital resources in their migration practices; how are existing digital platforms used for navigation, for spreading information and other purposes and how does access/non-access to these resources and infrastructures impact upon migrants’ routes? Finally, this research effort will enhance the debate on migration with new ways of understanding borders as fluid and provisional linkages between humans and nonhumans questioning and redefining migration, spatiality and the border itself.

Authors

• Vasiliki Markygianni, IT University of Copenhagen

• Vasilis Galis