Transnational Feminism in Film and Media

In tandem with a postnational imaginary that is nurtured by the ever-present promise of deterritorialized mobility and burgeoning migratory fluxes, walls and fences separating nation-states multiply. This is a burning issue: Even though nation-states at the centre of the global order increasingly present themselves as postnational, calls for tighter border security undermine utopian notions of both a borderless New Europe and the US as the Promised Land. This collection investigates the urgent issue of borderscapes and the cinematic imaginary by bringing together a range of new approaches in the field of film and media studies, crossing over into sociology, migration studies and artistic research. The contributions focus on the interrelated motifs of borderscapes as they are represented and used in transnational cinematographies, from Palestine to Sweden, Spain, Finland, Italy, Iran, Iraq, France, the UK and the US, and as constituting premises of cinematic production. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Transnational Cinemas journal.

2012

In present paper, the debates around mediatization and transnationalism constitute the backdrop for a discussion on the media and communication practices among Swedish expatriates in the Netherlands and forced migrants from Bosnia in Sweden. The complex relationship between (transnational) identity, place and mobility is studied at three intersections between media and migration: (1) creativity and connection-making, (2) The boundaries of mediated freedom and (3) the transnational production of locality. The paper stresses the importance of a contextual and non-media-centric perspective (see Morley, 2009); it is in agents' daily activities-where media practices and social practices are interwoven with each other-the interplay between processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization take place.. 1 Manuscript present to the Philosophy of Communication for the annual International Communication association conference in Phoenix, held on 24-28 May 2012. 2 Magnus Andersson (PhD) is a senior lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at Malmö University. His main research interest is the post-disciplinary crossroads between Media Studies, (Human) Geography and Cultural Studies where he has conducted studies on mediatization in relation to the countryside, migration, everyday life and 'the home'.

In present paper, the debates around mediatization and transnationalism constitute the backdrop for a discussion on the media and communication practices among Swedish expatriates in the Netherlands and forced migrants from Bosnia in Sweden. The complex relationship between (transnational) identity, place and mobility is studied at three intersections between media and migration: (1) creativity and connection-making, (2) The boundaries of mediated freedom and (3) the transnational production of locality. The paper stresses the importance of a contextual and non-media-centric perspective (see ; it is in agents' daily activities -where media practices and social practices are interwoven with each other -the interplay between processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization take place.

Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving Image Art explores cinematic and artistic representations of migration and mobility in Europe from the 1990s to today. Drawing on theories of migrant and diasporic cinema, moving-image art, and mobility studies, Bayraktar provides historically situated close readings of films, videos, and cinematic installations that concern migratory networks and infrastructures across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Probing the notion of Europe as a coherent entity and a borderless space, this interdisciplinary study investigates the ways in which European ideals of mobility and fluidity are deeply enmeshed with forced migration, illegalization, and xenophobia. With a specific focus on distinct forms of mobility such as labor migration, postcolonial migration, tourism, and refugee mobilities, Bayraktar studies the new counter-hegemonic imaginations invoked by the work of filmmakers such as Ayşe Polat, Fatih Akin, Michael Haneke, and Tony Gatlif as well as video essays and installations of artists such as Kutluğ Ataman, Ursula Biemann, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo. Challenging aesthetic as well as national, cultural, and political boundaries, the works central to this book envision Europe as a diverse, inclusive, and unfixed continent that is reimagined from many elsewheres well beyond its borders.

2009

This article is concerned with the ways in which globalization has impacted upon migration to the EU in the years since 1990. In particular, it looks at how the circulation in politics and the media of a set of negative images and vocabularies relating to refugees and asylum seekers has become part of a new exclusionary process. However, a number of films are examined which offer a representational challenge to this cultural and political narrative and it is argued that there are signs of an alternative set of discursive currencies emerging as part of a counter formulation and potentially radical cultural imaginary.

Postcolonial Studies, 2019

Download full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6JUQRNZVXSYMXVH5TVMA/full?target=10.1080%2F13688790.2019.1693110&fbclid=IwAR1pX03eU84EmKRZHeIRqchjhihPQNTTt4ySx2RL3t6DKxqKUefL4jCgefo& Films about irregular migration to Europe that centre on the Mediterranean sea crossing often unwittingly strengthen the regime of migrant (in)visibility furthered by sensationalist media, which include topoi of shipwrecks, dramatic rescues, and body bags. Such films' imagery of the Mediterranean as a metaphorical space of transformation into living death, actual death, or paradisiacal life also suggests that the identity of the migrant is indeterminable, zombie-like, even monstrous. Finally, focusing on the sea as central to the migrant journey makes invisible the broader geopolitical context, especially the continuing neocolonial relationship between the global North and the global South. My essay examines the political implications of focusing on migrant bodies in the middle of the sea, especially in sympathetic accounts which portray the Mediterranean as a gothic space where the perished yet ghostly migrants haunt Europe like revenants of its colonial past. Gianfranco Rosi's acclaimed docudrama Fire at Sea (2016) exemplifies this approach. I analyse it in the context of similar visual representations before briefly contrasting it with Želimir Žilnik's Logbook Serbistan (2015), which situates migrants in a broader geopolitical context and portrays them as non-idealised people with complex backgrounds, political opinions, and agency.

Revue européenne des migrations internationales

Revue européenne des migrations internationales vol. 32-n°3 et 4 | 2016 30ème anniversaire. Renouveler la question migratoire "The cinema needs the individual, and migrants need the cinema to re-emerge as an individual." Interview with Andrea Segre « Le cinéma a besoin de l'individu, les migrants ont besoin du cinéma pour redevenir des individus ». Entretien avec Andrea Segre «El cine necesita al individuo, los migrantes necesitan al cine para reconvertirse en individuos». Entrevista con Andrea Segre

Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen, 2022

In an article about the semiotic of the food parcel that Romanian mums send their children when they are away, the anthropologist Vintilă Mihăilescu wrote that the food ‘from home’ ‘is not from the marketplace, it is not even “as grandma makes it” or “as Mum makes it at home”, it is from Mum. It is Mum.’ (2018, our translation, added emphases), thus stressing the fact that it has the capacity to instantly recreate affective bonds across space. This chapter looks into the symbolic construction in alternative media of transnational forms of identification and connection that are developed and sustained through mobility and home/place-making practices, permeated with affect and emotion. Our exploratory analysis examines a video reportage by the Romanian online publication, Recorder, starting from the hypothesis that it offers viewers specific semiotic resources for interpretation, identity building in transnational contexts and engagement in the transnational social field. Titled ‘Diaspora la pachet’/‘Diaspora in a parcel’1 (Udișteanu and Muntean, 2019), the video reportage, released on 28 December 2019, follows en route Christmas food parcels sent by families in Romanian villages to their migrant members in London and Coventry, parcels that are carriers of affects, emotions and memories of the home(land). It enjoyed popularity on social media2 (most prominently on Facebook and YouTube), reaching both diasporic and non-diasporic publics, and being widely circulated in the context of the family-centred winter holiday season. We aim to bring out the characteristic ways in which an alternative media publication attempts to grant visibility to ordinary migrant and non-migrant actors engaged in regular mobilities and emotion-ridden interactions within transnational families and communities. Our points of reference for comparison are findings on the construction of Romanian intra-EU migration as a public problem (Beciu et al., 2018), which reveal an instrumentalization of the diaspora in mainstream media and political discourse. Reified identity categories (the ‘diaspora’, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Romanian migrants, the ‘heroes’ and the ‘slaves’/‘victims’) have thus been strategically used by public actors to formulate stances and claims regarding other issues (such as Romania’s country image), to mobilize, or to reposition Romania as an EU member-state in a transnational field of power relations (Beciu et al., 2018). As shown by Beciu and Lazăr (2016), the mainstream media representations of the migrants’ mobilities are well integrated into such discursive mechanisms, resulting into visibility patterns of mobility geographies, processes and identities that are essentialized, dramatized, and instrumentalized. The ensuing repertoire, they conclude, ‘circumvents the ways in which these actors foster meaningful relationships and roles’ in the transnational social field (Beciu and Lazăr, 2016: 54). Our working hypothesis is that, as an alternative media publication, the Recorder seeks to capture for its publics the ‘meaningful relationships and roles’ that migrants develop across borders in relation to their families and communities in the localities of origin and destination. We regard the verbal and visual representations in the video reportage as semiotic resources that diasporic and non-diasporic publics could use to interpret transnational migration phenomena and spaces, as well as to negotiate their identities and belongings to transnational communities (Georgiou, 2006). Within this frame, a special focus will be on emotion in relation to the migrants’ subjective engagement, an under-researched area in transnational migration studies (Boccagni and Baldassar, 2015). Our chapter will give insights into the distinct alternative media construction and performance of mobility practices that connect migrants and non-migrants in transnational contexts. We begin by conceptualizing transnational identity and relationship building through the lens of practices of home-/place-making, emotions and mobilities.

The term migration refers to both voluntary migrants as well as displaced communities including refugees and asylum-seekers who move because of reasons as varied as climate change, war, persecution and ethno-nationalist resurgences around the world. This seminar focuses on films and readings that can help us understand the representational nuances, ideological underpinnings and political rhetoric underlying debates on such displacement and relocation. Mapping different layers of displacement, including voluntary migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers, this course homes in on the connections between what Arjun Appadurai (1996) calls “mediascapes” and “ethnoscapes.” We will unpack their relevance in the context of contemporary happenings such as the global refugee crisis, Brexit and the rights of undocumented people during pandemics such as COVID19. Migrant media encompasses both media produced by the migrants as well as media representations that draws synergy from the debates around refugee rights and integration policies. Media practices become intricately woven into such new mobilities, as they can serve both as sites of resistance, as well as spaces where regressive binaries are further consolidated. Exploring media ranging from feature and experimental films (Human Flow, Sleep Dealer, Evaporating Borders, The Infiltrators), art works (Julio Salgado’s Undocuqueer and Ann Hirsch and Jeremy Angier’s SOS), short films made by migrant groups, and informational media commissioned by UNHCR, we will interrogate the aesthetic, contextual and historical framings of migrant media artifacts. In doing so, we will investigate the opportunities offered by media practices to bridge the gap between different models of migration and displacement. Is migrant media the same as ethnic media? Are there any overlaps between migrant media and diasporic media practices? How is migrant media envisaged on the policy front and human rights platforms? How do migrant media practices incorporate intersectionality while discussing issues pertaining to social justice? How may migrant populations intervene in issues of global concern through their media production? Through an exploration of such questions, this seminar will interrogate the varying patterns of desire, labor and agential assertions that mark migrant media forms and practices. Our aim in this course will be to think through key terms pertaining to migrant and diasporic media and use that as a conceptual ground for understanding the larger social realities that govern representational politics and media production practices.