“We Demand Better Ways to Communicate”: Pre-Digital Media Practices in Refugee Camps

Abstract

This article provides a historical perspective on media practices in refugee camps. Through an analysis of archival material emerging from refugee camps in Germany between 1945 and 2000, roles and functions of media practices in the camp experience among forced migrants are demonstrated. The refugee camp is conceptualized as a heterotopian space, where media practices took place in pre-digital media environments. The archival records show how media practices of refugees responded to the spatial constraints of the camp. At the same time, media practices emerged from the precarious power relations between refugees, administration, and activists. Opportunities, spaces, and access to media practices and technologies were provided, yet at the same time restricted, by the camp structure and administration, as well as created by refugees and volunteers. Media activist practices, such as the voicing of demands for the availability of media, demonstrate how access to media was fought for within the power structures and affordances of the analogue environment. While basic media infrastructure had to be fought for more than in the digital era and surveillance and control of media practices was more intense, the basic need for access to information and connectivity was similar in pre-digital times, resulting in media activism. This exploration of unconsidered technological environments in media and refugee studies can arguably nuance our understanding of the role of media technologies in “refugee crises”.

Smartphones as personal digital archives? Recentring migrant authority as curating and storytelling subjects

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The Salience of Digital Literacy in Agentic Integration of Migrants in Refugee Camps in Kenya

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Social Media in and Around a Temporary Large-Scale Refugee Shelter in the Netherlands

“…However, connectivity in refugee camps predates social media. In other words, media technologies are constructed and produced frameworks of refugeedom-both today and in the past-which includes social relations, administrative practices, legal issues, and refugees' experiences (Seuferling, 2019). Such a utilitarian approach to social media shows that social media's role in emphasizing humanitarian aid and compassion differs from its role in the defense of refugee's political rights to safe and dignified lives (Awad & Tossell, 2019).…”