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# Digital Mobility, Logistics, and the Politics of Migration
[Mohammad Khalefeh](https://www.welt.de/regionales/hamburg/article152540522/Ohne-Facebook-waere-ich-nicht-angekommen.html), a 17-year-old boy from Syria, spoke on behalf of many refugees when interviewed about his journey across ten European countries in 2015, on foot, by boat, bus, car, and train: “without Facebook and Google Maps I really do not think I would have made it to Germany.” And he was keen to emphasise that this was only possible with a strong network of relatives and friends, constantly exchanging information and knowledge. Maria Ullrich’s article in this issue of *spheres* explores these new forms of media use by migrants and refugees focusing on the so-called Balkan route, during and after the “summer of migration” in 2015. And she makes a remarkable contribution to the understanding of this incorporation of logistical technologies and infrastructures (within the very fabric) of migration. Taking an “actor-centered” perspective of the “autonomy of migration approach”, she sheds light on the uneven and contested process of the formation of “mobile commons” and “migrant digitalities”[^mezzadra_1] that support and facilitate border crossings and geographical mobility.
Migrants’ use of digital technologies is a relatively well-researched topic by now. To take a couple of examples, for several years now, Dana Diminescu has investigated how new digital communication technologies (DCTs) have resulted in the emergence of the “connected migrant”, with deep implications for the experience of diaspora, as well as for the structure of transnational networks and spaces.[^mezzadra_2] The use of smartphones and social media by refugees and migrants to counter isolation and to negotiate effects of distance, has been also explored in several sites, including the city of Naples and detention centres on islands in the Indian Ocean.[^mezzadra_3] Maria Ullrich’s intervention connects to recent scholarly work on the topic and uses the experiences across the Balkan route to study the ways in which digital and geographical mobility intersect to foster the ‘collective power’ of migrants and refugees. This is what makes up the unconventional nature of her study. I will briefly discuss her study by raising some questions that seem particularly important to me in order to pursue further research in the direction foreshadowed by Ullrich.
@ -19,7 +17,7 @@ The second remark has to do with the distinction between the “political” and
The autonomy of migration finds its expressions at this juncture between invisible and visible and political and tactical forms of agency. The investigation of these expressions requires an awareness of the structural framework within which they take shape. The use of smartphones, digital resources, and social media by migrants and refugees takes place within and against a border regime that is increasingly “logistified”, digitalised, and securitized. The growing entanglement of technological devices with human mobility and its management is of course something that resonates with wider social developments. This entanglement, as Ullrich demonstrates, is also a field of contestation and struggle, where “mobile commons” are continually produced and reproduced, laying the basis for the circulation of knowledge and providing the resources for crossing borders. With an experience like “Alarmphone/WatchTheMed”, also discussed by Ullrich, activists inspired by the militant tradition of abolitionism and by the project of building up a transnational “underground railroad”, use the phone as a “thing” through which “migration struggles at sea become politicized”.[^mezzadra_11] The forging and multiplication of such devices of politicisation, combining technology, localised knowledges, and militant engagement, figure among the most important tasks we are confronted with today.
## References
# References
[^mezzadra_1] Dimitris Parsanoglou, Nicos Trimikliniotis and Vassilis Tsianos, *Mobile Commons. Migrant Digitalities and the Right to the City*, London, Palgrave MacMillan, 2015.