Abstract

"With images being omnipresent in our contemporary world (Mitchell 2005; Mirzoeff 2011; Nail 2019), the way migrants are visualized is inherently linked to the way they are socially and politically perceived, as images play a key role in regulating public and political debate and sustaining stereotypes (Tylor 2008, 2013). In a context where both images as well as humans are in what could be called being an "epoch-defining mobility" (Nail 2015b, 2019a), the image of the migrant thus became a key figure to contemporary politics (Nail 2015a; Nuselovici 2018). Situated in a larger context of forced migration, this research builds upon the period of 2015-2016, the so-called refugee crisis, when news outlets abundantly showcased pictures of migrants coming to Europe (Castaneda 2016; Fotopoulos and Kaimaklioti 2016; Holmes 2016; Horsti 2016; Chouliaraki et all. 2017, Holzberg et al. 2018). Despite a now lower media interest, migration movements have not decreased, with more people being displaced in 2018 than ever before (IOM Report 2018). But despite the relevance of pictures, migrants' own visual self-representations remain almost completely absent from public as well as scholarly interest (Chouliaraki 2017; Phu 2018; Ponzanesi 2018; Stavinoha 2019). Rather than 'giving a voice', this project seeks 'to listen' and 'look at' migrants' existing practices of self-representation in order to address a still under-researched field within Studies on Migration (Maggio 2007, Cabot 2016). To do so, I will focus on Afghan migrants' self-representations with a special attention to how created visuals speak to their social aspirations, obligations, and pre- and changing conceptions of "Europe", with social media platforms as spaces of major significance to perform self-representation (Witteborn 2014). By analyzing images and discussing forms of visual communication with Afghan migrants, I aim to gain new perspectives on how migrants re-appropriate their own image and how visual self-representations mediate roles of migrants as political actors and therefore ask: o What visual self-representations do migrants create? o What possible political role can these images enact? And to focus on a European context, I further question: o what imaginaries of "Europe" do these self-representations reflect? The focus on migrants of Afghan nationality is of particular relevance, as Afghans are currently the second most displaced national group worldwide (IOM 2018), and mobility being used as a common strategy to cope with hardship and migration being deeply embedded in Afghans system of social meanings and values (Monsutti 2005, 2007). The study will be set in the cities of Athens and Berlin for their relevance in Afghan migration trajectories, with Athens being the "entrance door" to Europe (Dimitriadis 2015, Cabot 2016), and Berlin being considered an ideal destination (Fischer 2019). This study draws on visual and ethnographic methods and its three methodological entry points are the personal, the network and the collective. By countering and deconstructing common images of migrants, this research aims to broaden the spectrum of migrant representations by re-working a dominant visual field, and to bring the refugee himself in the center of knowledge production."

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