Information Directed Towards Migrants and the (Un)Making of Borders: An Interdisciplinary Perspective Between Countries of Origin, Transit, and Destination

ABSTRACT

Migration information campaigns and awareness-raising activities are increasingly used by Western governments as a “soft” tool of border enforcement in countries of origin, transit, and destination. Acting upon perceptions and aspirations, these information provision initiatives aim at convincing (potential) migrants to remain in or “voluntarily” return to their country of origin. As they rely on security and humanitarian rationales, they gather heterogenous actors whose practices oscillate between migration control and assistance. Yet, despite their apparently consensual nature, these initiatives bring out conflicting interests and generate contestations on the ground. In this perspective, this SI approaches information as a highly crowded and disputed field to grasp the complexity of power relationships in a restrictive migration context. Drawing on an interdisciplinary perspective, it investigates the discourses and norms conveyed by governmental initiatives that use information as a tool to control mobilities; the communication strategies defined by state and non-state actors to reach (potential) migrants; and the everyday practices deployed by migrants themselves to navigate this disputed information landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration information campaigns; Border control; Communication; Information; Assisted voluntary return; International organization for migration

What is being said to migrants throughout their journey? Beyond this apparently simple question, this Special Issue (SI) explores the power relationships underlying information provision towards migrants in countries of origin, transit, and destination. Since the 1990s, so-called “migration information campaigns” (MICs) and “awareness-raising” activities have been increasingly promoted by Western governments, the European Union (EU) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). These information provision initiatives aim to encourage (potential) migrants to remain in or “voluntarily” return to their country of origin (Cleton and Chauvin 2019; Cleton and Schweitzer 2021; Maâ 2021; Van Neste-Gottignies and Mistiaen 2019). Especially since the 2015 “migration crisis” in the EU, MICs have taken on an increasingly important role in the international management of migration (Andrijasevic and Walters 2010; Geiger and Pécoud 2010, 2012, 2014; Tjaden and Dunsch 2021). Simultaneously, they have become an object of inquiry for migration and border studies (Pagogna and Sakdapolrak 2021). Authors primarily apprehend MICs as a “soft” tool of border control (FitzGerald 2019) or as a “symbolic bordering practice” (Musarò 2019) aimed at shaping the perceptions and aspirations of migrants (Heller 2014). While scholars have repeatedly questioned the impact of such campaigns on migrants’ behavior (Bishop 2020; Brekke and Thorbjørnsrud 2020; Oeppen 2016), they have nevertheless highlighted how these initiatives expand borders into migrants’ “daily lives and intimate spaces” (Williams 2020). Furthermore, MICs convey and diffuse anti-migration discourses that can come to challenge and contradict local representations that value migration despite the risks it entails (Bredeloup 2014).

MICs primarily draw on the assumption that (potential) migrants lack accurate information or are misinformed about the reality of irregular migration (Balty et al. 2021; Fine and Walters 2022). Officially, the rationale claimed by actors involved in the international management of migration – and the IOM in particular – is that such initiatives should allow (potential) migrants to make a “well-informed decision” (Cleton and Schweitzer 2021). The information provided through MICs is however far from neutral; it mainly focuses on the risks of the journey (Van Bemmel 2020), the opportunities available to succeed “at home” (Dimé 2015), and the hardships of life in destination countries (Gammeltoft-Hansen 2017). In doing so, campaigns convey narratives that contribute to a moralization of migration and migrants (De Jong and Dannecker 2017; Watkins 2020), promote a “culture of immobility” in countries of origin (Pécoud 2010) and distribute unequal legitimacies in access to international mobility. Essentially, citizens considered as unwanted migrants are meant to become good “sedentary subjects” (Freemantle and Landau 2022) or condemned to be victimized and stigmatized when they attempt to migrate irregularly (Van Dessel 2023).

Despite their anti-migration objective, MICs rely on humanitarian rationales (Walters 2011) and are framed as a tool to protect migrants from the risks of smuggling and trafficking in a context of deadly borders (Andersson 2017; Pécoud 2010). Consequently, this policy tool fosters the convergence of a wide range of actors: while MICs are designed and run by intergovernmental organizations, private companies, and humanitarian actors (Van Dessel and Pécoud 2020), their implementation relies on the contribution of community-based agents (Maâ 2021; Rodriguez 2019; Savio Vammen 2022), including migrant intermediaries and local leaders. However, despite its apparently consensual nature, information provision towards migrants remains highly disputed on the ground. First of all, local actors and intermediaries can appropriate and subvert such initiatives, including as a resource to facilitate their own migration (Rodriguez 2019) and that of their peers (Maâ 2021; Magallanes-Gonzales 2021). Migrants, for their part, are far from being mere recipients of exogenous discourses, especially since they generally distrust institutional actors (Gillespie et al. 2016). They mobilize their own social and family networks to cope with “information precarity” (Wall, Otis Campbell, and Janbek 2019) and to retrieve what they deem as valuable information (Savio Vammen et al. 2021), including through the use of digital technologies (Godin and Donà 2021; Leurs and Smets 2018).

Moving beyond the assessment of the impact of MICs on migration dynamics, this SI approaches information in the context of migration as a highly crowded and disputed field, in which actors driven by heterogeneous interests interact, converge, and sometimes oppose one another. In this perspective, the capture and control of information can be apprehended as a form of borderwork in the sense that it gives rise to struggles around “the construction, dismantling, or shifting of borders” (Rumford 2012, 897). An imperative for academic research is therefore to further explore the conflicting use of information, as a tool for governments to enforce borders and a resource for migrants to cope with restrictions on their mobilities. Besides, scholars should examine how the provision and access to information impact power relationships between actors, and their roles and positions within the migration industry (Hernández-León 2013; Marino, Schapendonk, and Lietaert 2023). This SI investigates: (1) the discourses and norms conveyed by governmental initiatives that use information as a tool to control mobilities; (2) the communication strategies defined by state and non-state actors to reach migrants in countries of origin, transit, and destination; and (3) the everyday practices deployed by migrants to navigate this disputed information landscape.

Across these three complementary analytical threads, this SI locates the issue of information within broader debates driving contemporary migration and border studies, such as the racial and gendered dimensions of migration control, the agency of migrants and their relative autonomy, and the transformative forms of border and migration governance. Ultimately, it approaches information as a relevant nodal point to grasp the complexity of power relationships in a restrictive migration context. To do so, this SI defends an interdisciplinary perspective. It gathers contributions rooted in communication studies, political sciences, sociology, and anthropology. Authors investigate the role of diverse actors (Western governments, international organizations, journalists, non-governmental organizations, pro-migrant groups, and migrants themselves), and explore a range of communication tools and channels (digital technologies, traditional media, interpersonal interactions). Besides, this SI adopts a comparative lens that covers various geographic areas (Europe, North and West Africa, the U.S.-Mexico border, and Turkey) and scales (international, regional, national, local). Examining the case of countries labeled as spaces of origin, transit, or destination, the SI interrogates how specific socio-political contexts shape communication strategies and information practices.

The SI opens with two contributions that explore the discourses and norms conveyed by MIC’s and assisted voluntary return programs (AVR). Drawing on migration studies and political theory, Antoine Pécoud puts into dialogue literature on MICs and AVR to show how both communication devices legitimize border control by circulating a shared rationale about migration. Ida Marie Savio Vammen and Kathrine Syppli Kohl introduce the concept of “affective borderwork” to show how emotions are used to bring the border alive, both in countries of origin and destination. To do so, they draw on ethnographic data about an IOM-led MIC in rural Senegal, and motivational interviews conducted by the Danish police with rejected asylum seekers.

Secondly, this SI sheds light on the heterogeneous communication strategies used by state and non-state actors to disseminate their messages among (potential) migrants. Alagie Jinkang, Valentina Cappi and Pierluigi Musarò explore the role of Gambian journalists in defining and circulating narratives about the “back way” migration to Europe. Drawing on an online survey, the authors highlight the effects of the local information context on the practices of journalists involved in awareness campaigns. For their part, Verena K. Brändle and Petro Tolochko engage in a social network analysis to map the different actors circulating EU governments’ MICs on Facebook and Twitter. The authors identify the specific interests driving the involvement of different migration governance actors and highlight the “evasiveness” of online migration campaigns. Emphasizing the role of non-state actors, Anissa Maâ, Julia Van Dessel and Ida Marie Savio Vammen bring together three empirical cases that reveal the tensions and contradictions inherent to “peer-to-peer” information provision initiatives. By focusing on the Senegalese diaspora in the EU, transit migrants in Morocco, and returnees in Senegal, the authors interrogate the notion of “peerness” and argue that migrant intermediation transforms social hierarchies and relations of power within local migration industries. Furthermore, this SI explores the extent to which governmental attempts to control migration through communication campaigns compete with alternative forms of information provision led by non-state actors. By deploying Michel Foucault’s concept of “counter conduct”, Melissa Wall explores the resistance strategies that civil society and refugees deployed in the context of the 2015 “migration crisis” in Denmark. Drawing on empirical data and document analysis, the author shows how these actors creatively reinterpreted and opposed the Danish government’s anti-migration message by producing their own narratives. In a comparative perspective, Daniela Dimitrova and Emel Ozdora-Aksak analyze the communication strategies of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the migration field in Bulgaria and Turkey. Using Bourdieu’s field theory, the authors demonstrate that the local socio-economic and political context impacts NGOs’ communication strategies both towards migrants and the general public. Finally, drawing on a “militant ethnography” conducted at the French-Italian border, Livio Amigoni and Luca Giuseppe Queirolo Palmas explore the acquisition, understanding and circulation of information related to border crossings and asylum applications among undocumented migrants. By focusing on two information provision initiatives led by pro-migrant groups, they unveil the contentious character of information and knowledge in migration, and, more precisely, the ongoing “battleground” surrounding its value at the border.

Thirdly, this SI examines how migrants define and deploy endogenous information practices to cope with the restrictions imposed on their mobilities. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the Northwest of France and at the U.S.-Mexico border, Chloé Ollitrault and Chiara Galli respectively demonstrate that despite information precarity and conditions of vulnerability, migrants are capable of creating and selecting trusted channels of information. Focusing on the case of African migrants in a non-metropolitan area in France, Chloé Ollitrault explores information channels shaping their itineraries and decisions to move. She puts forward the key role of transnational social capital, networks of solidarity, and racial dynamics of trust-building among migrants. In the same vein, Chiara Galli studies the case of unaccompanied minors migrating from Central America to the U.S and assesses their level of knowledge about the dangers of the journey and the specific rights they are entitled to. She demonstrates that the acquisition of information depends on the strength and composition of their social networks, and more specifically on the role of their parents, coyotes, and fellow migrants.

Disclosure statement

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