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Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures pp 191–209Cite as

Noopolitical Resistances Networks as Counterlaboratories of Migration and Identity in Europe

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Part of the book series: Springer Series in Adaptive Environments ((SPSADENV))

Abstract

Geopolitics of knowledge (or noopolitics) have played a significant role in the generation of urban and regional networks. However, contrary to what it is usually assumed, noopolitics is not just limited to the “soft,” mediated realm, but also alters tangible reality, producing and transforming space. In order to better understand these spatial configurations, the focus of this research is placed on virtual community-based networks which acquire a spatial dimension to counter-hegemonic policies. These alternative networks acquire a particular intensity in the Mediterranean region and Central Europe. In this regard, the term “counterlaboratory,” used by Agamben, will be explored and extended to qualify the status of these strategies in the region, especially during the European migrant crisis in 2015. Through schemes and images, Faist’s pentatonic model of transnational political space (re-interpreted by Banki, Refug Rev 1:1–24, 2013) is used to make visible the relations among agents in each specific example. Since the study has been mainly conducted in an urban scale, most of the counterlaboratories are located in cities, although some of them belong to peripheral areas or to the virtual realm. From a spatial perspective, this paper aims at addressing the question of identities in a hyper-mediated and urbanised world. Besides, the arrival and settlement of “the Other(s)”—without which Europe is not able to define itself—leads to new practices and habits which blur and redraw the limits of the European identity, which has never been fixed or stable, but subject to permanent crises and transformation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “For decades there have been boats and smugglers bringing people in search of jobs over the Mediterranean via Spain and Italy. They came and continue to come mostly from the Maghreb region and from Western Sub-Saharan Africa. They were mostly regular migrants (…). These older, smaller, flows continue today, coming mostly via Morocco and the Canary Islands. They tend to fit the standard definition of migrations.

    A major difference in this current flow, compared to decades old flows is that the centre of gravity has shifted to the Eastern Mediterranean. Greece has become the strategic link for these migrations: (…) already in early 2015 it surpassed Italy as the main recipient, receiving 68,000 refugees, mostly Syrians but also, among others, Afghanis and Iraqis. Until 2015, the rise in Mediterranean Sea arrivals was felt primarily in Italy. In 2014, Italy received over three quarters of all maritime refugees and migrants (170,000). In contrast, Greece received 43,500. In this new turn of events, the central and eastern Mediterranean routes have become comparable in size. But the people in each come from different countries. (…)” (Sassen 2016).

  2. 2.

    Neither the Member States of the EU nor EU bodies such as Eurostat are required to gather data on the number of migrant people detained (Access Info and The Global Detention Project 2015, 6).

  3. 3.

    I have discussed the topic of externalisation of the Other in: “Inside/Outside: On the Hybridization of Real and Virtual Spaces for Resistant Bodies.” In Nomadic Interiors: Living and Inhabiting in an Age of Migrations, edited by Luca Basso Peressut et al. Milan: SMOwn Publishing, 2015.

  4. 4.

    Latour uses the term in a techno-scientific context: the counterlaboratory would be a laboratory built to refute or reshape the conclusions drawn in another laboratory. In this sense, scientific production is described through a warlike antagonism. Other authors use the term “laboratory” to refer to spaces that share similar conditions with those that Agamben mentions, such as Li (2006) or Graham (2011).

  5. 5.

    The clearest example of this may be found in the “new forms of labour-force extraction” that Google or Amazon have established, profiting from the unremunerated work of the users who spend their time and attention as basic currencies in exchange for their free services (Andreotti and Lahiji 2016, 129) and the accumulation of stock in what Horning (2012) calls “our digitised identity containers” or self-representation profiles which project a specific subject to the rest of the connected community.

  6. 6.

    Arquilla and Ronfeldt point mostly to the strength of new NGOs, but later they would also recognise that the most effective example may be the global network of jihadis as a new form of spatialising conflict (2007, 7).

  7. 7.

    Banki (2013) uses the term “precarity” applied to “[f]orms of vulnerability and impediments to security and stability that stem from both formal (legal, political) and informal (social, cultural) processes.” Butler (2009, 96:25–32) made a nuanced distinction between “precarity” and the most common term “precariousness”: while the former refers to a particular, politically-induced vulnerability (by capitalism, war, catastrophes, etc.), the latter is shared by all mortals: it is a corporeal vulnerability that affects all beings, related to the notion of “bare life.” Despite Banki’s use of the term “precarity,” both concepts are intersecting and offer a wider perspective on the issue of migration, in which natural precariousness of nomad bodies are affected by conditions of precarity.

  8. 8.

    http://bordermonitoring.eu/ Numbers in parentheses indicate the diagram corresponding to each counterlaboratory in image 2.

  9. 9.

    http://w2eu.info/.

  10. 10.

    http://watchthemed.net/index.php/main.

  11. 11.

    http://moving-europe.org is a joint initiative of bordermonitoring.eu, welcome2europe and Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht&Migration.

  12. 12.

    Indymedia Estrecho was inserted in the global publishing network Independent Media Center (also known as Indymedia or IMC), which groups different journalist collectives—although anyone can participate and contribute—that report on political and social issues. It was created during the Seattle anti-WTO protests in 1999.

  13. 13.

    https://arriving-in-berlin.de/.

  14. 14.

    https://www.openstreetmap.org/.

  15. 15.

    Bourriaud (2002, 13) asserts that art’s purpose is not “to prepare and announce a future world” anymore, but rather to model “possible universes.” The artistic action thus becomes a “vector of knowledge” (Genard 2008, 104) for social practice.

  16. 16.

    The project is further explained in a publication by the artist in Artforum. A fragment can be read in Khalili’s website: http://www.bouchrakhalili.com/the-constellations/.

  17. 17.

    http://www.docnextnetwork.org/.

  18. 18.

    http://lesvossolidarity.org/index.php/en/.

  19. 19.

    http://www.refugees-welcome.net/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Higher Technical School of Architecture, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

    Marta López-Marcos

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  1. Marta López-Marcos
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Correspondence to Marta López-Marcos .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Senior Research Fellow in Future Cities, Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford Campus, Bishop Hall Lane, Essex, Chelmsford, UK

    Lakshmi Priya Rajendran

  2. Course Leader, MSc Town Planning, School of Engineering and the Built Environment, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford Campus, Bishop Hall Lane, Essex, Chelmsford, UK

    NezHapi Dellé Odeleye

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López-Marcos, M. (2020). Noopolitical Resistances Networks as Counterlaboratories of Migration and Identity in Europe. In: Rajendran, L., Odeleye, N. (eds) Mediated Identities in the Futures of Place: Emerging Practices and Spatial Cultures. Springer Series in Adaptive Environments. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06237-8_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06237-8_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-06236-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-06237-8

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