On Wednesday, 6 February we will be hosting a special ERMeCC Lunch Seminar in collaboration with the Erasmus Institute for Migration and Diversity (EDMI) in G2-35 from 12:00 to 13:00.
The Joint seminar entitled “All at sea in the Mediterranean: security, borders and technologies” focuses on the links between migration, securitization and digital technologies incorporating top-down and bottom-up perspectives in the analysis of digital practices by refugee migrants during their journey to Europe as well as the evolution of EU responses to the migrant ‘crisis’ in 2015 and beyond. Please feel free to bring your lunch and comments! In turn, we will provide intellectual stimulation by presenting the research detailed below.
The smartphone as a lifeline: An exploration of refugees’ use of mobile communication technologies during their flight
Dr. Amanda Paz Alencar, Assistant Professor of Media and Communication, in particular in relation to media and migration studies.
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC)
Building on the results of a qualitative study with 16 male refugees (mostly from Syria) settled in the Netherlands, this article reports on an investigation that applied insights from the Uses & Gratifications (U&G) framework and refugee studies to examine the media use of refugees, and to link these to the material, social and psychological needs emerging from the journey. With a focus on the smartphone, our study distinguished four significant clusters of media uses and gratifications among the sampling population: smartphone as companion, an organizational hub, a lifeline, and diversion. First, the use of smartphones was linked to refugees’ need to contact family, friends and connect with migrant communities. Likewise, the importance of establishing contact with other refugees and smugglers through mobile phones reinforces the agency of these migration networks within mobility processes, leading to the idea that social media technologies may function as an extension of offline networks, rather than replacing them. The current findings also point to refugees’ smartphone usage for getting a sense of security. Finally, this study demonstrated the use of smartphones for preserving memories of the journey through the storage of pictures taken of important moments experienced during the flight. Additional studies should include other methodologies and samples to further validate our theoretical framework and findings.
Failed Securitisation Moves? Smugglers as Existential Threat to the EU
Dr. Helen Hintjens, Assistant Professor in Development and Social Justice
International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)
In the context of global migration policies, the EU has tried to distinguish itself as respecting human rights in its migration policies. In 2015, deaths at sea of refugees from war-torn and despotic countries like Syria and Eritrea started to rise dramatically. Restricted coast guard activities following the end of Mare Nostrum, the Italian navy’s search and rescue operation, was partly responsible. Mare Nostrum had covered large parts of the Mediterranean between Italy and North Africa, up to Libyan waters. General EU responses were based on deterrence, and unwillingness to rescue. However, there was much more noise than consensus in 2015. One response was to declare war on ‘criminal gangs’ of smugglers, who were equated with traffickers or even slave traders by some politicians. It was claimed smugglers were responsible for an existential threat, though it was not clear whether the ‘referent object’ was refugees who drowned in smugglers’ boats, or deaths. In three separate ‘securitisation moves’, EU member states sought to deflect attention from their own collective and individual responsibility for the crisis and the deaths. Even philanthropic and voluntary sector relief operations were labelled as smugglers in 2015-16.
Framing smugglers as posing an existential threat to domestic EU populations, the first and second ‘securitisation moves’ of 2015-16, failed to convince most audiences. This was because, in the first move, refugees were portrayed as new slaves, innocent victims of smugglers forcibly transported to European shores. This completely lacked credibility and ran into widespread disbelief among scholars in particular. Military solutions continued to be proposed, however, ostensibly against smugglers, but in effect deterring refugees from leaving Southern Mediterranean and Turkish shores and moving by boat towards the EU. Deportation back to dangerous transit countries like Libya increased.
Refugees and asylum seekers, already framed as bogus and as undeserving of care for some decades prior to 2015, were not likely to be accepted as referent objects deserving of protection. Instead, in the third securitisation move, the referent object became the EU itself and its member states. In this third move, refugees and asylum seekers, even unaccompanied minors, became (re)securitised as the principal existential threat. Corroborating this, from 2016, the EU and individual member states started to make deals to pay smugglers to dissuade those who were the most vulnerable in the entire crisis situation – desperate asylum seekers, refugees and migrants trying to reach safety in Europe.