MOBILE – Mobility Law Open Lab with Berfin Nur Osso

Exploring Refugee Perspectives on Migration Management Laws: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry into Visual Artworks and Social Media

Guest presenter: Berfin Nur Osso is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, and a research affiliate at the Refugee Law Initiative of the University of London. She is currently finalizing her doctoral research investigating the interplay between the internalization and externalization of migration management and the political agency of refugees. Osso’s current research involves international refugee law, critical border studies, EU asylum law and policy, human rights theory, and visual research methods. She obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree and a minor degree in International Relations from Koç University (Istanbul, Turkey) in 2017, and a Master of Social Sciences (MSocSc) degree in International Relations and Political Science from Tampere University (Finland) in 2019. She held various research-related positions, including as a visiting doctoral researcher at the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research at Radboud University (2023), as a project researcher at the University of Eastern Finland (2021–2022), and as a research assistant at Migration Research Center (MiReKoc) at Koç University (2017) and the Institute of International Relations Prague (2016). Osso’s articles appeared in several internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Refugee Law, Geopolitics, and Forced Migration Review. Her master’s thesis entitled Rethinking Rightlessness: The Right to Have Rights and the EU-Turkey Statement was published as a book in 2023 (On İki Levha). Osso is also enthusiastic as a political cartoonist about reflecting on contemporary phenomena in her editorial cartoons

Presentation: Despite the centrality of visuality to law and modern society, little is known in research on international refugee law and European Union asylum law about how refugees communicate their experiences of migration management in their visual and multimodal artifacts. What can visual and multimodal approaches contribute to legal research to better understand refugee experiences of migration management laws and policies from refugees’ perspectives? In this work, I endorse a transdisciplinary approach to legal research to understand the intricate interplay between refugee-produced images and migration governance dynamics. I address two case studies conducted in 2022 and 2023 on the Greek island of Lesvos, involving qualitative analyses of 70 refugee-produced paintings from the Hope Project Greece and 50 social media posts from the ‘Now You See Me Moria’ Instagram account. These investigations were triangulated with semi-structured interviews with the founders of these organizations, legal and policy documents, and reports of international and non-governmental organizations. The reflections underscore that empirical investigations of paintings, photographs, and videos produced by refugees and shared online can (i) endorse refugees as vital actors of refugee/asylum law, and reveal (ii) their everyday practices, narratives, and perspectives, and (iii) the law’s impact on their everyday lives. These investigations can help understand how migration management laws are implemented and reacted on the ground and ascertain how these laws look from refugees’ perspectives. I conclude by discussing the potential of transdisciplinary approaches using visual and multimodal techniques from a bottom-up perspective in refugee and asylum law scholarship, emphasizing their contributions to academic debate, knowledge production, and informed discussions around migration governance. Scholarly attention to refugee perspectives, narratives, and everyday practices can enhance refugee agency, voices, and visibility, mobilize support from a broader audience, and facilitate the recognition of their rights claims vis-à-vis dehumanizing and criminalizing discourses and practices of state authorities.

Time: 1 November 2024 14:00-15:15

Place: MOBILE – 6B-2-22 Southern Campus + ONLINE

Online participation

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