Technologies of resistance, intervention, and protest in refugee and asylum seeker webcomics

As ‘born digital’ texts, webcomics prompt critical questions around the virtues of connectivity and accessibility associated with Web 2.0 and how these might be harnessed for forms of interaction and advocacy that transcend the confinements of immigration detention. By analysing Safdar Ahmed’s documentary webcomic, ‘Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre,’ and the portfolio of webcomics produced by the asylum seeker known as Eaten Fish, this paper explores the radical mobility of webcomics which detail the intimate, lived experiences of refugees, asylum seekers, and other complex migrant subjects to global communities online. Created within detention and disseminated beyond, these webcomics expose human rights abuses, challenge neocolonial, and political understandings of global mobility and, ultimately, offer insights into whose stories are empowered and/or championed in the digital sphere through an alternative visual culture in defiance of Australia’s punitive migration system.