The visual international politics of the European refugee crisis: Tragedy, humanitarianism, borders

Hansen, Lene; Adler‐Nissen, Rebecca; Andersen, Katrine Emilie

doi:10.1177/0010836721989363

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…The first examines the construction of migrants and migration in photojournalism (e.g. Adler-Nissen et al, 2020; Berents, 2019; Bleiker et al, 2013; Chouliaraki and Georgiou, 2022; Chouliaraki and Stolić, 2019; Hansen et al, 2021). This literature examines how visuals, mostly photographs, are used to communicate particular representations of migration, in particular by rendering migration a ‘crisis’.…”

Section: The Visuality–migration Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis

2023

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Visuals, including photographs and data visualizations, play a crucial role in the politics of EU border security, both as an internal governance tool (e.g. in surveillance) and as an external means of communication/representation (e.g. in photojournalism). Combining scholarship on photographic representations of migration with literature on surveillance technologies and data visualizations, we argue that these visuals interact to reproduce gendered and racialized meanings of migration and border security. Using a feminist postcolonial lens, we develop an intervisual framework for studying how processes of gendering and racialization render subjects, practices and spaces knowable at the intersection between these visuals. We apply this framework to a case study of Frontex’s Risk Analysis Reports (2010–2021) and demonstrate how it is applicable to other security institutions. The intervisual analysis reveals how the migrant Other and (white) European are visually reproduced through: 1) the (in)visibilization of bodies; 2) the ascription and denial of agency; and 3) the spatialization of borders as ‘frontier imaginings’ that oscillate between fortification and expansionism. The intersectional co-constitution of gender and race, we conclude, is central to the visual politics of Frontex, contributing to problematizing migrants and migration and legitimizing violent border practices.

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Section: The Visuality–migration Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis

2023

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“…As Nick Vaughan-Williams argues, the logic of the international, cannot be characterised as a logic of 'fixed territorial borders located at the outer-edge of the territorial state, but [is] infused through bodies and diffused across society and everyday life' as a 'generalised bio-political order' . 30 This continual, diffuse process of bordering and striating manifests itself in various sites: from airports 31 to visual news photography 32 to popular culture. 33 Positioned against striated spatial configurations such as the international and their respective bordering processes, Deleuze and Guattari situate smooth spatial configurations that tend towards and configure ahierarchical, non-determined, and multiple interrelations between various political, cultural, and social elements.…”

Section: What Is the Memescape?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorising the memescape: The spatial politics of Internet memes

Baspehlivan

2023

Rev. Int. Stud.

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Despite the increasing centrality of Internet memes for everyday political circulations and practices, their emergent implications as low-cultural artefacts of global politics have received little theoretical attention. In this article, I develop a critical theory of memes to provide a conceptual apparatus to understand the global political implications and possibilities of this pop-cultural phenomenon. I argue that, in order to attend to the emergent implications of memes and consider their differentiations from other pop-cultural phenomena, we need to unpack the spatial logic through which memes emerge and circulate. Analysing this spatial logic through the concept of the ‘memescape’ and deploying Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notions of striated and smooth spaces, this article articulates the spatial logic of the memescape as comprising rhizomatic, decentralised circulations of digital content; nomadic, playful, and humorous disruptions of once-stable signs; and affective congregations of a multiplicity of subjects. Through two examples exploring how these smooth spatial tendencies produce divergent political potentials in the resistant memes of Indigenous digital communities and reactionary memes of the Alt-Right, I conclude that the global politics of the memescape is open-ended and undetermined which requires careful and nuanced political and ethical attention to actualise its futures for emancipatory horizons.

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“…For example, academics have analysed the iconography of refugee photos (Clark, 2020), investigated how visual environments produced by relief organisations (Massari, 2021) and mainstream media reinforce border securitisation in the E.U. (Hansen et al., 2021), and addressed how depictions of migration in newspapers shape “cultures of inhospitality” by dehumanising (Bleiker et al., 2014) or criminalising refugees (Banks, 2012). However, although anonymous depictions of refugees desensitise audiences, visual accounts of individual deaths at border crossings tend instead to generate public outrage and sympathy (Lenette & Miskovic, 2016).…”

Section: Approaching the Aesthetic Turn: The Construction And Subvers...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The aesthetic turn in border studies: Visual geographies of power, contestation and subversion

Moze

Spiegel

2022

Geography Compass

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In recent years, critical border studies have developed sophisticated concepts and methodologies for exploring the multifaceted spatialities, sociologies and temporalities of contemporary borders. In this article, we consider how the “aesthetic turn” that has gained prominence in the scholarship can further inform thinking in border studies. Specifically, we focus on the role of the visual in the construction as well as subversion of borders, suggesting possible avenues for future critical aesthetics‐engaged research on COVID‐19 era border reconfigurations. To do so, we first briefly outline the theoretical evolution of border studies, paying attention to recent conceptualisations of borders as dynamic processes of social and spatial differentiation. We then build on the borderscapes concept to unpack research on border aesthetics, with particular attention to the heterogeneous roles played by visual objects such as maps, photographs and videos in shaping both hegemonic and counter‐hegemonic processes of bordering. Finally, we bring these contributions into discussion with recent insights on the COVID‐19 pandemic, sketching several ways to advance aesthetic concepts and methodologies in academic research on borderscapes that are emerging with, and will likely outlast, the pandemic. We suggest that border studies and affiliated sub‐fields can gain useful insights from attending more explicitly and robustly to dynamic visual geographies of power, contestation and subversion.

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The visual international politics of the European refugee crisis: Tragedy, humanitarianism, borders

Cited by 20 publications

References 46 publications

The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis

The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis

Theorising the memescape: The spatial politics of Internet memes

The aesthetic turn in border studies: Visual geographies of power, contestation and subversion

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