Exploring refugee experiences of migration management: A socio-legal inquiry into visual artworks and social media

Little is known in research on international refugee law and European Union asylum law about how refugees use visual and multimodal artifacts to communicate their experiences with migration management. This article addresses that gap by adopting a socio-legal approach, integrating visual and multimodal inquiries into refugee law research to understand the intricate relationship between refugee-produced images and migration governance. I illustrate this through two qualitative case studies from Lesvos, Greece: 70 paintings from the Hope Project Greece (2022) and 50 social media posts from the ‘Now You See Me Moria’ Instagram account (2023). This analysis is triangulated with semi-structured interviews with the founders of these initiatives, along with relevant legal and policy documents and reports. The study employs a theoretically informed, empirically grounded framework that captures the interplay between migration management and refugee counter-struggles in everyday life. My findings show that empirical investigations of refugee-produced visuals shared online are crucial for three reasons: they endorse refugees as vital actors in refugee law; they reveal refugees’ everyday practices, narratives, and perspectives in navigating migration management; and they highlight refugee law’s impact on their daily lives. Such investigations illuminate how migration laws and policies are experienced and resisted on the ground, offering unmediated insights into how these laws appear from refugees’ viewpoint. Ultimately, I argue that incorporating bottom-up visual and multimodal techniques into refugee law scholarship offers new avenues for academic debate, knowledge production, and informed discussions on migration governance. Scholarly attention to refugee perspectives, narratives, and everyday practices can enhance refugee agency, voices, and visibility, facilitating recognition of their struggles against dehumanizing and criminalizing state discourses and practices.