Moving images across borders: visual and digital resonances of human (im)mobilities

The monographic issue aims to question the link of human (im)mobilities and the circulation of images in transnational spaces, attempting to reframe and broaden the concept of mobility in at least two ways. First, mobility is conceived as a fundamental dimension of human experience, which as an analytic category embraces different phenomena such as migrations, diasporas, and settler colonialisms. The monographic issue attempts to think together these different forms of human mobility through the common ground of their visual dimension: images move with people, and people make images move. Like the anthropology of media and social media has shown in last decades, human mobility and cultural flows have been more and more interlinked thanks to the circulation of images in the global space. Moreover, digital technology and the access to internet and social media have played a crucial role in the production, circulation and reception of images in the global sphere. Anthropological research has shown how the human appropriation of new media re-produces social and cultural diversity, multiplying their uses rather than homogenizing their effects. At the same time ethnographic studies have shown the different ways images get embedded in local contexts and particular historical trajectories, while also bringing transformative power to social practices and collective imaginaries. Starting from these premises, the monographic issue also attempts to undermine a simplified idea of mobility linked to global flows, increased human mobility and widespread access to digital media; its aim is rather to analyse the circulation of people and images without neglecting the power asymmetries that inform people’s experiences of (im)mobility. In this sense the publication project overtly addresses the question of state border crossing and (post)colonial relations, and the shaking of social, cultural and moral boundaries that human (im)mobilities can involve. From this perspective critical analysis compels us to delve deeper into the processes of human differentiation and hierarchization, which take place in unbalanced transnational spaces and are importantly influenced by the global economy of (racial) capitalism. Furthermore, the monographic issue questions visuality, (im)mobility and inequality from a temporal perspective that seek to connect past to future: if images are, in many ways, incontrovertible outputs of history, they are also a powerful ground for political imagination and rising ideas of future. The monographic proposal includes nine articles and a photo-essay, and offers a wide range of ethnographic research that combines visual anthropological analysis with methodological richness (fieldwork, archival research, digital ethnography, collaborative anthropology…). and theoretical accuracy. The first part of the issue addresses the matter of the visual and digital tools used in the government of migrations under the current European border regime (D’Onofrio, Santanera). From the control of external state borders readers are then invited to take into account the issue of internal borders in the contemporary Italian society, and the ways they are appropriated and contested through social media and photography by the young generations of “new Italians” with a migratory background (Bachis, Cingolani). The link of Black diaspora and Italian collective memory is developed in an original way through the presentation of archival research of Eritrean diasporic filmmaking in Italy in the 70s (Jedlowski). A further thematic thread concerns the relationship between indigenous people and visual production in postcolonial contexts, which questions both ethnographic research on “exotic” postcards travelling from Latin America to European metropoles in colonial times (Scardozzi), and on contemporary indigenous filmmaking of India’s “De-Notified” Tribes following their enduring marginalization (Tilche and Khanna). In the last part of the issue, the anthropological analysis of the videos of the Iranian-American YouTuber Nasim Aghdam questions the idea of subjectivity linked to the aesthetic politics of audio-visual technology in capitalist conditions (Manoukian); the relationship of subjectivity, political violence and visual production is also taken into account from the perspective of “audiences” related to the circulation of images during Israel’s war on Gaza (Pilotto). The monographic issue includes a photo-essay, which is a co-written comment of the combination and juxtaposition of some of Mohamed Keita’s pictures taken in Italy, Mali and Kenya. It attempts to retrace connections among images and places that are also part of the photographer’s intimate experience and explore the possible dialogue between anthropology and photography through a collaborative approach (Keita and Pilotto).