‘I want to own myself:’ digital bordering, migrant masculinities, and the politics of refusal

ABSTRACT

Over a period of eight years, in order to apply for asylum on mainland Greece most applicants had to first pre-register by calling the Greek Asylum Service on Skype. Due to issues of capacity and political will, the Skype calls were most frequently ignored, and applicants often continued calling without response every week for months to years in the hopes of receiving international protection, documentation, and social benefits. This paper explores the experiences of a handful of men who called on Skype with no response and decided to exit the system. In particular, it theorizes these exits as political acts of refusal that generate new possibilities of masculine self. Building upon doctoral fieldwork conducted in Athens, Greece, the paper discusses the challenges posed to masculinity by a technologized border regime that forced individuals to face digitalized alienation and erasure, considering the strategies that men employed to contest the system and safeguard their masculinities. The article contributes to refugee studies, critical studies of men and masculinities, and studies of digital bordering.

KEYWORDS:

• Refusal
• migrant masculinities
• technology
• digital bordering
• asylum
• Greece

Acknowledgements

With gratitude I recognize the support of the Rhodes Trust. I am also grateful to Jess Webster and Ale Cábez for their collaboration and friendship, and to Professor Reena Kukreja for her mentorship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 This occurred while this article was under review, and as such, this paper does not explore the new online system.

2 The digital alienation shaped by the Skype system highlights a divergence from literature that explores how technology allows immobile migrants to maintain connection with social and familial networks through 'digital kin work' (Baldassar, 2022, p. 5; Eide, 2019). In this case, technology did not facilitate connectivity. It further entrenched isolation.

3 See Belloni 2020 for another example of people stepping away from digitalized communication systems

to protect masculinity. Note, however, that her focus is on withdrawal from emasculating communications that happen to be facilitated by technology, not withdrawal from an inherently emasculating technology.

4 The observed refusals were most clearly enacted through individual decision making; for example, it was common for individuals to exit the Skype system while their friends continued calling, and vice versa. Yet I also observed groups of friends leave the system together, or at the suggestion of others. Future research would benefit from exploring the extent to which refusal results from group strategizing, shared aspirations, and collective decision making, particularly with regard to masculine sociality.

5 Refusal can also be read in temporal terms. States exert power through forced waiting and temporal control (Bhatia & Canning, 2021; Biner & Biner, 2021; Hage, 2009), which is exemplified by the Skype system’s power to make people wait indefinitely, adhere to a specific temporal architecture, and remain temporally dependent on something that might not even occur. When people decide to prioritize other temporal obligations, or to reject the system altogether, their refusals constitute a partial withdrawal from the politics of waiting.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Rhodes Scholarship: [Grant Number ].

Notes on contributors

Stephen Damianos

Stephen Damianos completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre. He previously completed his MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, and a BA in Political Science and Journalism at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on digital bordering, technology, and human rights.