Aware Migrants: The role of information campaigns in the management of migration

Abstract

Taking as a starting point studies on the biopolitics of bordering, as well as media studies, this article explores how information campaigns deter potential migrants and refugees from leaving their countries depict them in very specific ways, operating as ‘new bordering practices’ that are in conjunction with extraterritorial border policies. This article probes this question through the example of a specific information campaign – Aware Migrants (2016) – funded by the Italian Government and managed by International Organization for Migration (IOM) to dissuade potential newcomers from attempting the journey across the Mediterranean Sea. As the analysis of Aware Migrants makes clear, it contributes to normalizing a transnational imaginary into a militarized borderscape comprising places of violence and death, exploitation and detention, which is part of the complex dichotomies of care and control, proper of contemporary border regimes. Finally, the article sheds light on how these symbolic bordering practices contribute to nurturing a ‘compassionate repression’ that increasingly and silently legitimizes the difference between the ‘us’ (the figure of the citizen) and the ‘them’ (the figure of the foreigner).

Disciplining migration aspirations through migration‐information campaigns: A systematic review of the literature

“…The papers focus on major immigration countries and on migration pathways between them and source countries. Ten of the selected articles focus on EU member states as countries that launched migration‐information campaigns (Bartels, 2017 ; Brekke & Thorbjørnsrud, 2018 ; Fiedler, 2020 ; Gazzotti, 2019 ; Hartig, 2017 ; Heller, 2014 ; Musarò, 2019 ; Oeppen, 2016 ; Rodriguez, 2019 ; van Bemmel, 2020 ), whereas six papers engage with Australia’s deterrence messaging and Overseas Public Information Campaigns (OPICs) (Fleay et al., 2016 ; Hartig, 2017 ; Hightower, 2013 ; Marczuk, 2016 , Richardson, 2010 ; Watkins, 2017 ). Only two papers look at migration‐awareness‐raising campaigns from the USA (Kosnick, 2014 ; Williams, 2020 ).…”

Rational Actors, Passive and Helpless Victims, Neither, Both: EU Borders and the Drive to Migrate in the Horn of Africa

“…They also revealed that they used the phones to communicate with friends and members of families abroad, to keep connected with other migrants who were in the process of migrating and, some, to communicate with traffickers to get route information and information about destination country. The point to make out of this is that information campaigns aimed at dissuading migrants from engaging in irregular migration (Brekke & Thorbjørnsrud, 2018;Musarò, 2019;Nieuwenhuys & Pécoud, 2007) may not only carry similar information to what the migrants are already exposed and fail to discourage them from migrating. But migrants have access to other information sources too.…”

Irregular migration, borders, and the moral geographies of migration management

“…States and intergovernmental bodies also seek to govern how people think about migration through information campaigns (Brachet, 2016; Fleay et al., 2016; Heller, 2014; McNevin et al., 2016; Musarò, 2019; Nieuwenhuys and Pécoud, 2007; Oeppen, 2016; Pécoud, 2010; Schloenhardt and Philipson, 2013; Watkins, 2017a; Williams, 2019). Such campaigns date to at least the 1980s when the UNHCR used them in Cambodia and Vietnam (United Nations, 1992: 715).…”