A transdisciplinary project investigating the dynamics of migration along the borders of the European Union. It combines approaches from social sciences and media studies with artistic and media production, in order to examine how migration movements are transforming Europe and to investigate the representations and representability of migrant experiences.

The project starts with practical research, carried out by a team of academics, cultural producers and theorists, develops through symposiums and workshops and culminates in a final exhibition.

http://www.transitmigration.org

Part of Projekt Migration, a project initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) in cooperation with DONiT e.V. (Documentation Centre and Museum on Migration from Turkey) and the Kölnischer Kunstverein (Cologne Art Association).

The main geographical focus of Transit Migration is in South Eastern Europe, where such countries as Turkey, Greece and the former Yugoslavia have recently become new transit migration countries.

One of the main objects of the project is to build an interregional network of local experts: therefore, the research team at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology in Frankfurt am Main in Germany has worked in close collaboration with the Zurich Academy of Art and Design and an international group of cultural producers and theorists working at a local level. In this sense, the team of researchers becomes a Trans-European Research Network.

The research focuses on transnational perspectives of migration movements. Part of the research examines the visual culture and experience of migrants, focusing on the way in which migrants have been portrayed in the media since 1989, trying to understand which image of migrants and refugees has made its way into the public consciousness, how this relates to the EU border regime, and how these visual discourses vary at a local level.

On the other hand, there is an attempt to define migration as a transnational phenomenon, representing migrant tactics and survival strategies. The idea is that a new transnational topography of migration is now shaping at the borders of South East Europe, and the aim of the project is to make these contexts visible.

Investigating migration practices and groups in a scientific manner is not only quite unprecedented in the new transit countries and migrant destination of South East Europe, but also in the “old” countries of migration in Western Europe (such as Germany).

Two international symposiums provided a chance for meeting, confronting and thinking over the issues of the project.

The international symposium “Transnational Europe 1”, held in Crete in October 2004, focuses on the formation of a new Europe of borders and migrations. This focus implies a shift in perspectives: what is usually considered the periphery of the European Union – its southern and eastern fringes – has become a centre of transnational mobility, a hotspot for the movement of migration and Europe’s attempts to control it.

The international symposium “Transnational Europe II”, held in Cologne in November 2005, returns the perspective explored in the first symposium to Germany. Here, much emphasis is given to the image of being a “national fortress” at the core of “fortress Europe”. Seen from the apparent “periphery” of migration movements, however, the assumed centrality of the nation state becomes a fragile construction. The state’s wish for power is confronted with new forms of European governance transforming national into European border zones. At the same time, migration itself effectively challenges all European and national attempts to govern it.

The closing exhibition – held in Cologne from October 1, 2005 to January 15, 2006 – examined the cultural practices of migrants, as well as their forms of expression and strategies for survival from the 1950s to the present day. It collected artistic productions emerging from the research carried out and from the workshops regularly held within the project, in Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne.

The basic idea is that the natural crossing between consumer habits and niche economies leads to a natural influence and to a transformation of the existing social structure.

A special focus concerns the locations where migration occurs and becomes visible: from the German living room to the EU border post; from the computer terminal of the SIS (Schengen Information System) to the late afternoon soaps in Greece – and in other places, the migrants’ local "markets" and neighbourhoods, the pictures in police stations and Europol, and the images of the migrants’ journeys.

Topics of the project are:

The visibility of the border: there is an ever increasing number of images and texts dealing with Europe’s frontiers, especially in the Western media. Indeed, what was once considered invisible has become unusually clear: the often highly dangerous strategies developed by migrants to overcome border control mechanisms and the transnational routes that have arisen in the process.

The invisibility of the border regime: In the Western media, the migration taking place at the EU's frontiers (and in particular in the new countries of immigration in South East Europe) is portrayed as something that occurs far away from everyday life – in the wilderness, on lonely beaches, in remote forests and mountain regions. However, a closer look reveals that there are many control mechanisms in place within European cities and towns, on the streets and in train stations. Indeed, the agents of the border regime not only position themselves behind barriers and fences, but in the very heart of Europe – and in national, European and global politics.

Since the Schengen and Amsterdam treaties, the national borders in the South East of the continent have become increasingly "Europeanised". Enforcing these borders serves the hegemonic interests of the EU, and officials at the national level – especially those in countries aspiring to become EU members – find themselves obliged to assume the duties of border guards.

At the same time, international non-governmental and other transnational organisations in the West are also increasingly intervening in current migration policies. Like the media images mentioned above, they help determine a new discourse in which migrants appear both as "perpetrators" and "victims" in relation to the border – both roles reflecting the manner in which migration tends to be criminalised and scandalised. It is hardly surprising that most people associate the external border of the EU with police, human trafficking and smuggling rings.

The autonomy of migration: It is thus easy to forget that migrants are acting individuals who develop their own strategies to adapt to the conditions at the borders, and that the practices of the border regimes themselves are closely intertwined with these strategies. Indeed, while the border regimes may make ostensible attempts to keep the borders shut by criminalising migration, they nevertheless reckon with, and even depend on, the fact that a certain number of individuals will make their way through. More and more it is the transnational, illegal immigrants who are becoming the pawns of the increasingly flexible and globalised economies of South East and Western Europe. However, at the same time the political and economic self-interest of these economies provides migrants with certain opportunities to develop tactics of their own and shape their own destinies – leading to the unexpected effects of an autonomy of migration that extend beyond the limits of what can be controlled through planning.