You are warmly welcome to attend the EuroStorie seminar with Berfin Nur Osso. The title of her presentation is Narratives of Migration Management: Exploring Refugee Perspectives through Visual Art and Social Media within Transdisciplinary Legal Research.
Time: Friday 13. September 2025, 13-14
Location: Unioninkatu 33, 2nd floor meeting room (247)
Zoom: https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/66083900537
Meeting ID: 660 8390 0537
Abstract: In the evolving landscape of international refugee law and migration management research, visual narratives, as opposed to textual investigations, have been overlooked yet emerge as powerful sources in providing a distinctive view on displacement and shaping public discourse and policy responses. In this paper, I reflect on two case studies conducted in 2022 and 2023, respectively, with the Hope Project Greece and the social media movement ‘Now You See Me Moria’ (NYSMM), where I explored the narratives recounted by refugee artists and photographers on the Greek island of Lesvos and disseminated in cyberspace. I highlight the power of visual and multimodal storytelling in understanding EUrope’s bordering regime, focusing on its impact on refugees at the European Union’s (EU) Greek–Turkish external border in Lesvos after the 2015 ‘migration crisis’.
Transcending the conventional boundaries of legal research, I endorse a transdisciplinary approach to understanding the interplay between refugee rights claims through visual and multimodal communication and migration management. Attending to the qualitative analyses of 70 refugee-produced paintings from the Hope Project and 50 social media posts from NYSMM’s Instagram account, triangulated with semi-structured interviews with the founders of these organizations, I discuss how refugee-produced artifacts publicized on social media reflect refugees’ views on their experiences with EU’s migration management measures. The findings underscore the role of visual art and digital technologies in amplifying refugee voices and the emergence of refugees as key actors of positive change vis-à-vis dominant, reductive discourses and in mobilizing support for refugees' digital rights claims before transnational spectatorship.
As a final observation, I explore the ethical dimensions of using refugee-produced artifacts within scholarly research, including voyeurism, credibility, representation, and positionality. I conclude by arguing for the potential of transdisciplinary approaches using visual and multimodal techniques in international refugee law scholarship and research on migration management, emphasizing their nascent contributions to knowledge production and informed discussions around policymaking. By centering the perspectives of refugees on how they navigate their journeys within legal frameworks, this paper seeks to advance scholarly debates by providing a deeper and contextual understanding of the interplay between refugee rights claims vis-à-vis migration management.
For more information on this seminar and upcoming events, check out their website.