ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the videos created by eight Sub-Saharan migrants on their experience of physical, affective and symbolic immobility during their attempts to go to Europe. Based on long-term collaborative research that includes active participation and in-depth interviews, the chapter analyzes different sets of videos recorded from 2015 to 2020 along the European external borders in Northern Africa. By framing some of the procedures that the EU border regime employs for the contention, detention, deportation, dispersal and dispossession of Sub-Saharan migrants in the area, the videos offer an account of institutional alegal practices intended for their physical immobility, but also for producing symbolic and affective immobilization that lead to feelings of being stuck, asynchronized or misrepresented. By exploring the functionalities and narrative patterns displayed in the videos, the chapter contributes to the discussion about how these media manifestations crystallize different scales of (im)mobility as bordering practices against black-skinned migrants in the North of Africa through a complex techno-legal, affective and symbolic mechanism of securitization of migration.
