PERILOUS NAVIGATION
Knowledge Making with and without Digital Practices
during Irregularized Migration to Öresund
Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
Abstract: This article explores navigation when knowing is intrinsically
difficult. It looks at how irregularized migrants know during their perilous
trips to and through Europe, focusing particularly on the significance of
digital practices on these journeys. Based on retrospective ethnographic
fieldwork conducted with Syrian refugees in and around the DanishSwedish borderland, the article seeks to engage with digital migration studies, arguing that an understanding of irregularized migrants’
navigation, whether with or without digital practices, must involve the
emplacement and embodiment of knowledge. Second, the article brings
experiences of instability and danger into the anthropological theorization of knowing in order to explore the shifting positions and capabilities
of knowing bodies.
Keywords: digital practices, irregularized migration, knowing, navigation,
refugees, rights
Being an irregularized migrant entails navigating through unfamiliar places
while being stripped of political rights (Khosravi 2010: 3). The lack of rights
makes these places dangerous for people to navigate as the threat of robbery,
violence, and exploitation is immanent. It also pushes them beyond built and
more navigable and hospitable environments, at times with the intended purpose of letting nature be the enforcer of border patrol (De León 2015). The
lack of rights makes knowing in and about these places extremely difficult.
Nevertheless, when navigating through these unfamiliar places, knowing can
at times mean the difference between life and death for irregularized migrants
(Borkertetal.2018;Gillespieetal.2018).Thisarticleexploresnavigationwhen
knowing is intrinsically difficult by looking at how irregularized migrants know
Social Analysis, Volume 64, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, 95–112 © The Author(s)
doi:10.3167/sa.2020.640306•ISSN0155-977X(Print)•ISSN1558-5727(Online)
96 | Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
during their perilous journeys to and through Europe. Recent studies have
documented the importance of digital practices for irregularized migrants (see,
e.g.,Borkertetal.2018;Dekkeretal.2018;Gillespieetal.2016,2018;Leurs
and Smets 2018; Zijlstra and van Liempt 2017). This article builds on these
studieswhileheedingthecallfromKevinSmets(2018)fora‘non-media-centric’ perspective. This crucially entails unpacking how irregularized migrants’
digital practices are taking place alongside other practices in ways that cannot
be distinguished (cf. Mollerup 2020). I agree, then, with Trimikliniotis et al.
(2015: 11) that “digitalities must be fully integrated in the social, not as an
‘addon’or‘external’devices,butasfullyinterwovendimensionsofexistence,
praxis and living.” My understanding of digital practices, correspondingly, is
broad.InspiredbyMarkHobart’s(2010)proposaloftheterm‘media-related
practices’, I understand digital practices as “embodied sets of activities that
humans perform with varying degrees of regularity, competence and flair”
(Postill 2010: 1) and that are related to digital media devices, although not necessarily directly engaging with them.
This article enters into a dialogue with two areas of study. First, it engages
with digital migration studies by seeking to nuance understandings of access
to information, misinformation, and digital infrastructures during irregularized
journeys. Thus, I argue that an understanding of irregularized migrants’ navigation, with or without digital practices, must take a point of departure in the
emplacement and embodiment of knowledge that incorporates both the difficulties of knowing in a moving environment and the implications of danger for
knowing. Second, the article enters into a conversation with anthropological
theories of knowing. By bringing instability and danger into the theorization of
knowing, I emphasize the shifting positions and capabilities of knowing bodies. This, then, is also a call for a stronger engagement with psychology and
other neighboring fields to understand the complexities of knowing bodies and
for taking seriously Ingold’s (2000: 3) cue that “the person is the organism, and
not something added on top.”
In order to explore irregularized migrants’ navigation, I draw on anthropologicaltheoriesofknowledgemaking(see,e.g.,Harris2007;Marchand2010b),
which have explored knowing through the “indissoluble relation between
mind, body, and environment” (Marchand 2010a: 1). My use of the notion
‘knowledgemaking’recognizesthatthisconcept“capturestheprocessesand
durationalqualitiesofknowledgeformation;andratherthanbeingsuggestive
of hierarchical and methodical transfer, it fosters thinking about knowledge
as a dialogical and constructive engagement between people, and between
people, things, and environment” (Marchand 2010c: xii). The empirical material, which has supported this theory building, has largely focused on craftsmanship, dance, and other fields where stability and repetition are essential
traits. The empirical material I am bringing these theories into a conversation
Perilous Navigation | 97
with is significantly characterized by instability and volatility. While this precarity makes the focus on relations between minds, bodies, and environment
particularly important, it also draws attention to the ways that instability and
danger can affect knowing, as bodies’ cognitive functioning can be affected by
fear and insecurity. This attention serves to advance anthropological theories
of knowledge making beyond stability and repetition.
Anthropological work on precarity and volatility has indirectly given attentiontoknowingthroughtheconceptof‘socialnavigation’.HenrikVigh(2009:
420) contends that the notion of social navigation highlights “motion within
motion,” in other words, an awareness that we move in moving environments.
The concept of navigation further highlights the directionality of movement,
which is particularly relevant to irregularized migrants for whom moving is
often a quest for life and rights. Irregularized migrants are thus not simply
movinginamovingenvironment;theyarealsocruciallymovingtowardsomewhere or at least away from somewhere. However, the somewhere they are
moving toward is not so much a place as it is a state of being, in safety and
with rights. For irregularized migrants, moving geographically can potentially
entail a change in legal status, leading to safety, which for most could not be
obtained without the illegalized movement. The directionality of navigation
engenders an attention to knowing, since places are made navigable through
knowing one’s immediate surroundings and situating it in relation to what is
beyond. By engaging theories of knowing with the concept of (social) navigation, I thus seek to shed light on how unfamiliar places are made familiar and
navigable under these perilous circumstances.
In this article, I first describe my methodological framework. Then I give a
brief introduction to research on irregularized migrants’ navigation in/of the
European border regime. Building on this body of work, I develop a theoretical
framework by connecting theories of knowing with the concept of navigation
and exploring knowing as emplaced and embodied. In the following two sections, I unfold my empirical material through this framework by exploring how
irregularized migrants’ knowledge is implicated by their engagements with
their surroundings and by their bodily states. Finally, I conclude that digital
migration studies should attend to knowing rather than solely access to information, and that the anthropology of knowing should pay attention to how
people know in situations of distress.
Methodology and Empirical Foundation
This article is based on retrospective ethnographic fieldwork carried out with
Syrian refugees and solidarity workers in and around the Danish-Swedish borderlands,theÖresundregion,mainlybetweenNovember2018andApril2019
98|Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
and in the fall of 2019.1 The refugees I spoke with had arrived in Denmark
and Sweden as irregularized migrants between 2014 and 2016 and have since
obtained refugee status, with the exception of one, who arrived in and obtained
refugeestatusinGermany.Mainlyusingin-depthinterviews,Ihaveexplored
how people navigated on their journeys to Europe, focusing particularly on
their digital practices in this process. Some people were interviewed two or
three times, and I have also spoken with networks of friends and families. This
has given me several accounts of the same journeys as well as insights into
the impact these networks have had on knowledge making during journeys.
Extended family members would sometimes follow each other after a week’s
interval, receiving information and names of smugglers from family members
farther along the route. Interviewing several members of the same families and
traveling groups have provided a thickness and connectedness in my material,
illustrating knowing as intricately relational.
Furthermore, some of my interviews have included what I term ‘device
tours’, in which interviewees have shown me old conversations, pictures, and
more on phones and computers, allowing these to become focal points in the
interviews, both through my wish to see specific conversations and through
interviewees deeming that I would find certain conversations interesting. These
device tours at times played a role in bringing up memories and emotions and
gave me a sense of particularly difficult and important parts of the journey
where digital practices had been significant. Even in interviews that did not
explicitly entail device tours, phones, often placed in front of the interviewees,
were frequently used to support the stories being told, either through including
them in body language or by using them to search for forgotten details or to
callotherswhocouldprovidethose.Someinterviewslastedhalfanhour;others lasted several hours and were weaved together with meetings and socializingwithfamilymembersandothers.Often,Ihavefolloweduponinterviews
through text and voice conversations and interviewees have at times shared
additional images and videos after the interviews.2 The interviews were carried
out in Danish, English, and Arabic.3
Studies of Irregularized Migrants’ Navigation with Digital Practices
Knowledge making has been established as a key aspect of irregularized migration(Diminescu2008;GonzálezMartínez2008;LeursandSmets2018;Maitland
andXu2015;ZijlstraandvanLiempt2017).Recentyearshaveunsurprisingly
seen an increase in studies of media and knowledge-making practices of irregularized migrants as digital media devices have become increasingly portable
and capable. Pointing to the significance of digital media devices, Borkert et al.
(2018)arguethat“theoutcomesofreceivingpoororfalseinformationcancause
Perilous Navigation | 99
bodily harm or death, loss of family, or financial ruin.” Smartphones have been
heralded as alleviators of information precarity (Wall et al. 2017), potentially
increasing irregularized migrants’ mobility and making them less dependent on
smugglers(Dekkeretal.2018;ZijlstraandvanLiempt2017).AsLatoneroand
Kift(2018)argue,“inmakingtheirwaytosafespaces,refugeesrelynotonlyon
a physical but increasingly also digital infrastructure of movement.” Ponzanesi
and Leurs’s (2014) argument—that borders themselves have become destabilized and reconfigured through medium-specific technological affordances—
supports this. Social media have further been conceived to “actively transform
the nature of [migration] networks and thereby facilitate migration” (Dekker
and Engbersen 2014: 401). In this relation, the significance of connections to
people farther along the route have particularly been emphasized (Borkert et
al.2018;Dekkeretal.2018).Yetthereservationthatmoreinformationdoesnot
necessarilyequalbetterinformation(GonzálezMartínez2008)isimportantto
keep in mind and becomes increasingly relevant as information becomes easier
toshare.Gillespieetal.(2018)showthat“disinformation(lies),misinformation
(inaccurate information), false rumors, and conspiracy theories via social media
networks [make] journeys even more precarious.”
Addingtothisinformationprecarity,irregularizedmigrantsmoveina‘moving environment’ (Vigh 2009) in which instability and inconsistency challenge
knowing in a different way. The notion of a moving environment emphasizes
that information might be unreliable not only because it is false, but also
because the environment shifts so quickly that information might be outdated
immediately, such as when borders close, the weather shifts, or border police
approach a certain area. Chouliaraki and Georgiou (2017: 160) point to the
“double moral requirement,” which is performed at Europe’s outer borders “to
uphold the humanitarian imperative to care for vulnerable others and, simultaneously, to protect European citizens from potential threats by those same
others.” These divergent requirements produce ambiguous and shifting border
practices, which add to the uncertainty of irregularized migrants who might
sometimes be welcomed with help and at other times be violently attacked and
rejected at the very same borders.
Understanding irregularized migrants as moving in a moving environment
also points to the importance of the temporality of their journeys. For instance,
during the summer and fall of 2015, irregularized migration in Europe was regulated by intensely shifting policies that at times meant authorities would assist
irregularized migrants in moving from place to place, while they at other times
would arrest them or deport them without the irregularized migrants necessarily knowing when they would be met with which approach. Further, situations
might depend on individuals’ practices of enforcing policy. In the stories I was
told, at times one irregularized migrant would be allowed to cross a border
without a passport while seeing others—at the very same time—being rejected
100 | Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
or withheld at the border. In other words, what is true in one instance might
thus not be true in another, and what is true for one person might not be true for
another—even at the very same time at the very same border. The danger, lack
of rights, and continually shifting circumstances make it crucial that we study
not only what irregularized migrants know or can know, but also, increasingly,
how they know. While many of the above studies have made crucial contributions to the study of irregularized migrants’ access to information, information
precarity, and digital infrastructures, the ways of knowing—with or without digital practices—during these perilous journeys have received less attention. Particularly, the implications of danger for knowing have been largely overlooked.
Knowing and Navigation
In order to connect the concept of navigation with theories of knowing, let me
unfold navigation as a social practice. Vigh (2009: 419) points out that navigation is used to describe how “people act in difficult or uncertain circumstances.”
Hedirectsourattentiontotheetymologicaloriginoftheword‘navigation’,that
is,‘tosail’,whichheusestoemphasizehowwemoveinmovingenvironments,
highlighting motion within motion. In other words, the concept brings attention to “the interactivity of practice and the intermorphology of motion,” thus
granting us “an analytical optic which allows us to focus on how people move
and manage within situations of social flux and change” (ibid.: 420). However,
irregularized migrants are not simply moving within a moving environment, in
which borders open and close and possibilities for moving shift continuously.
They are also crucially moving toward somewhere, although this somewhere is
not necessarily or consistently a specific destination. That is, the directionality
of navigation, crucially, does not equal a direction.
This is important as the directionality of irregularized migrants’ journeys is
influenced by the continuous knowledge making they are engaged in, as a constant calibration between what is possible and what is desirable. Vigh speaks
of“movingtowardapositionintheyettocome”(ibid.:426);however,irregularized migrants are not only moving toward a social position in the future,
but simultaneously and interconnectedly moving in geographical terms. This
importantly entails making the place one is in known and situating it in relation to other places. Perceiving one’s immediate surroundings and connecting
them to what is beyond make them navigable. In this way, navigating is fundamentally connected to knowledge-making practices, as knowing mediates
between one’s immediate surroundings and their connection to other places,
or between the possible and the desirable. In other words, the relation between
where one is and where one wants to go is established by knowing, which is
in turn fundamental to navigation.
Perilous Navigation | 101
In anthropology, there is a recognition that knowledge making “is a dynamic
process arising directly from the indissoluble relations that exists between
minds, bodies, and environments” (Marchand 2010a: 2). Harris (2007: 4) sees
knowing as an ongoing process rather than a certainty, as “an achievement of
work, experience and time” (ibid.: 1). Explaining his use of the active form
“becoming knowledgeable,” Tim Ingold (2010: 115) holds that “knowledge is
grown along the myriad of paths we take as we make our ways through the
world in the course of everyday activities, rather than assembled from information obtained from numerous fixed locations” (ibid.). Ingold further contends:
“A mindful body that knows and remembers must also live and breathe. A
living, breathing body is at once a body-on-the-ground and a body-in-the-air.
Earth and sky, then, are not components of an external environment with
which the progressively ‘knowledged-up’ (socialized or enculturated) body
interacts. They are rather regions of the body’s very existence, without which
no knowing or remembering would be possible at all” (ibid.: 116).
This is explicitly an understanding of knowledge as outward reaching;
knowing is always bound up with the environment. It is also important that
knowing is never permanent because it depends on our relation with the evershifting environment, a relation that continually changes as we move and the
environment moves. As mentioned, the empirical material that has inspired
this theorizing has mainly focused on stability and repetition, in other words,
fields where bodies have generally been receptive, relaxed, and in balance.
In order to unfold the significance of knowing for irregularized migrants,
whose bodies are often strained and functioning in a state of fear and exhaustion, I will approach knowing through two interlinked but differently directed
aspects of knowing, namely, knowing as outward reaching, which I will refer
toas‘emplaced’,andknowingasinwardreaching,whichIwillcall‘embodied’. These somewhat contrived terms, which should not be understood as
opposites, allow me to build on the above understanding of knowing while giving specific attention to distinctive aspects of knowing that are crucial for people living through danger and uncertainty. Knowing as emplaced emphasizes
the importance of engagement with the environment for knowledge making
and gives attention to the significance of motion in motion, the moving environment. Knowing as embodied draws attention to the importance of bodily
states for knowing and recognizes that cognitive processes “by which different
forms of knowledge are generated are multiple, involve different activating
conditions,andproducedifferentoutcomes”(Cohen2010:183).Thatis,when
working under stress or danger, the body responds differently to sensory perceptions (cf. Meteran et al. 2019), and this affects how irregularized migrants
know. These terms allow me to focus on particular aspects of knowing as well
as their interconnections, while acknowledging, of course, that knowing is
always both emplaced and embodied.
102 | Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
My point in bringing attention to cognitive functions is by no means to “put
the ground inside the brain, leaving individuals stranded in an unspecified
‘environment’whichisinvokedmerelyforthepurposesofallowingthebody
to have something material to interact with” to invoke Ingold’s (2010: 116–117)
critique of “psychologistic approaches to ‘grounded cognition’” (ibid.: 116).
Rather, my point is to explicitly acknowledge the complexities of the world we
inhabit as co-constituted by the complexities of bodies. Thus, when irregularized migrants know, whether with or without digital practices, they know in
intensely moving environments in which authorities might give them food and
shelter or detain them, where the air might allow them to breathe or might
freeze their lungs, and where the wind might aid them toward safer shores or
might capsize their boat. And they know with bodies, which might breathe
with difficulty and see unclearly because of fear, cold, fatigue, and hunger.
Knowing Language, Branches, and a Hole in a Fence
I started paying attention to the importance of bodily states for knowing through
the stories I was told of ends of journeys. The distress of the journey was often
brought out when refugees described how their bodies slowly let go of the
strain once they had arrived. Mohammed was 14 years old when he and his
brother embarked on a journey that would take months and include several
futile attempts at crossing the Serbian mountains in deadly freezing temperatures.4 He spoke of walking in snow up to his thighs, of weather so cold that a
bottle of water quickly turned to solid ice, and of giving up along the way, or at
least trying to give up. “When we arrived here in Denmark,” he said, “I stayed
home for one week, just sleeping next to the radiator. I didn’t do anything.”
He curled his body in foster position as he explained how he lay down next to
the radiator at the asylum center. During the journey, Mohammed experienced
extremities of weather he did not think he would survive, brutality and dishonesty of smugglers, hunger and thirst, and uncertainty. Eventually, stuck in the
snow in the mountains after having been deceived and threatened by several
smugglers, he and his brother gave up, convinced that their bodies could not
continue. They called the police to turn themselves in, expecting to be picked
up, brought to warmth, and given food—and that this would mean they would
be forced to apply for asylum in a country they did not expect would grant them
safety.ButitwasNewYear’sEve.Thepoliceweredrunk,andnoonecame,so
they were forced to continue.
For Mohammed and his brother, then, navigation was not only about knowingtheirsurroundingsandconnectingthemtootherplaces;itwasalsoabout
knowing their own bodies in this environment and how much they could
endure in order to survive. The cold of the environment was not external to
Perilous Navigation | 103
their bodies, but rather folded into them and became part of their bodies.
While the environment is a region of the body’s very existence without which
no knowing would be possible, it can be hostile and make not only knowing
but also breathing difficult.
Bodily strains can also mean that irregularized migrants at times act in a
state of perceived bodily detachment. Noor, a Syrian man in his twenties, had
fled Syria when he was informed that he would be arrested, once again. Having survived two imprisonments and the torture it entailed, he was certain he
would not survive becoming a political prisoner once more. He had already
lost friends and family members to torture, and his body was scarred, physically and psychologically, by his previous imprisonments. He had only a brief
time to prepare his journey and say goodbye. He fled over the Mediterranean
through Libya, hoping to arrive at a destination where he would be allowed
family reunification with his wife, who is a stateless Palestinian, and their
infant son. Again and again, he told me as we spoke that all he wanted was to
go somewhere where he could bring his family out of the war, a purpose that
was bigger than anything to him. As he told me of his journey, I kept asking
him how he knew what to do in different situations in order to understand how
hispathhadtakenshape.Heexplainedtome:“Youarenotthere100percent.
All my muscles were tense. My head wasn’t working. All I was thinking about
was home. I was scared of the water and of what would happen in Italy. It was
as if we were drunk. We did things, but I don’t know how we did it. I would
rather die than do it again.”
Noor was pointing out to me, in response to my questions about how he
knew, that in this state of distress and bodily detachment, knowing is not simply a matter of obtaining information, out there to be grabbed or grasped. His
feeling of sensory detachment from his body affected his ability to know and
made him act in a state of perceived disconnection from his body. Psychologists find that when people recognize they are facing an emergency, certain
hormones are increased in the body. This engenders physiological changes
that “may be helpful for enhancing physical responses to threat [although] the
associated neurochemical changes could actually reduce survival by negatively
impacting on cognitive processes, such as memory or attention” (Robinson and
Bridges2011:31).Ontheonehand,Noorwasabletodothingshethoughthimself incapable of, as his physiological response to threat potentially enhanced
hisphysicalcapabilities.Yetatthesametime,hiscognitivefunctioningwas
also affected, making him feel as if his head “wasn’t working,” enabling him to
do these things, not knowing how he did it. In this way, Noor moved through
his journey with a body that responded to the environment, affecting how he
sensed and how he was able to know.
Noor was not alone in experiencing that his head was not working as he
was used to. Wael, a young man who traveled on his own from Syria, spoke
104 | Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
good English. After a dangerous and strenuous journey, he arrived at the central train station in Copenhagen. Although he had made it to his destination
country safely, he was terrified. His older brother lived in Denmark, and Wael
was to contact him once he arrived so his brother could pick him up from the
station. But with a Turkish SIM card, he was not able to call even though he
had carefully saved his battery, using his phone sparsely on the few occasions
he had access to Wi-Fi. At the train station, he heard a family speak Arabic
and asked them for help. They gave him directions to an asylum center and
a note in Danish, which he could show to people if he needed assistance in
finding the center. He did not think of approaching anyone else for help. “I do
[speak English]. But I was so scared. I didn’t know, maybe I just didn’t think
that everyone speaks English here.” He also did not think of asking the family
for help to get Wi-Fi access so he could call his brother. When he finally made
it to his brother’s home, after having spent some days in the asylum center,
he said he finally started becoming calm again, as his body started letting go
of the strain. Under different circumstances, Wael would know that he could
speak English with most people in Denmark and that he would be able to
accessaWi-Ficonnection.YetduringhisjourneyandhisstopatCopenhagen
Central Station, his bodily state of fear and anxiety affected what he was able
to do and thus what he was able to know and how he was able to know. This,
in turn, affected his navigation as he first ended up in an asylum center rather
than his brother’s home.
For Wael, speaking his mother tongue during a time when his cognitive
processes were challenged was manageable. In the same way, decision making
can be made manageable by focusing on specific things in times of uncertainty
and difficulty. For Noor, quick family reunification was crucial, and this was
the only thing he focused on. Having not had much time to prepare for the
journey in Syria, it was in Libya—where a smuggler left him in a house with a
growing group of irregularized migrants—that he sought to prepare himself for
the further journey and find out where to go. The smuggler had provided them
with Wi-Fi, so they were able to access the Internet through phones while they
waited “until the ship was full and the weather was good.” Noor had a simple
non-touchscreen phone that could access the Internet. He sought out information along with the others in the house. The smuggler had warned them about
leaving the house, saying they would be arrested if they did so. Therefore, their
only source of information was what they were able to find through online
searches and communication with others. Noor particularly mentioned the
Facebook group karāǧāt almošanṭaṭīn as useful.5 In this group, he found a table
that compared a number of countries in Europe in terms of visa requirements
and family reunification processing time. Noor decided to go to one of the two
countries with the shortest family reunification time, according to the table.
When he later met some other Syrians traveling to one of those countries, the
Perilous Navigation | 105
Netherlands, he joined them. Upon reaching the Netherlands, he was informed
by migration authorities that it would take him much longer to achieve family reunification than the time he had expected based on the table. He then
decided to continue on to the other country, Denmark. Here, as well, family
reunification turned out to take much longer than the table had suggested.
However, while the table was based on unreliable information, it was simple
and approachable. A very complicated process was thus made manageable and
enabled him to make a decision. As I hope to have made clear through these
stories, when bodies move through dangerous and uncertain journeys, knowing
is crucially entangled in the fear and fatigue they experience.
Balloons, GPS, and (Not) Knowing
Having mainly discussed knowing as embodied, I shall now focus more explicitly on the significance of knowing as emplaced, pointing particularly to how
the moving environment complicates knowing. In addition to the type of
research Noor did in the house in Libya, many irregularized migrants prepared
for the journey by contacting friends and family who had already made the
journey. Depending on the route and time of the flight, some were able to talk
to people they met on the journey and share information, while others such as
Noor, who was stuck with the same group of people in the smuggler’s house,
had fewer opportunities to talk to people along the route. The situation for
GhadaandZiadwasdifferentfromthatofNoor.Theytraveledinthelatesummer of 2015 through Turkey, where Syrians and other irregularized migrants
moved somewhat freely in certain areas such as Basmany Square. In these
places, information was easier to come by and so was equipment needed for
thejourney,includinglifejacketsandballoons.Ghadaexplainedtomethat
they had been told that they should put their phones inside balloons and tie
them with a knot when they crossed the sea. That way, their phones would
remain dry even if they ended up in the water.
When Noor and the others in the house in Libya were getting ready to leave
for the boat, an older man had put his phone in a plastic bag and burned the
edges to seal it. He had then tied it to his body and put on two layers of clothing. “We laughed at him. We didn’t know why he did this,” Noor confided to
me. He told me that he and the others had cared more about trimming their
hair and beards so people would not be afraid of them when they arrived in
Italy, as they looked rough from having been on the road for weeks. When they
left the house, armed smugglers had taken their bags from them. This is when
Noor understood the two layers of clothing. When they got to the water, they
were hurried into a small boat and sailed to a larger boat offshore. They had to
walkintothewatertogetonthesmallboat.Onepersonwasoverweightand
106 | Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
could not get on the boat, so Noor jumped in to help him. He was in the water
up to his chest, and his phone was ruined. Noor recounted: “Some people
knewwhattheyweredoing.Theyweretotallyready.Others,likeme,wehad
nocluewhatweweredoing.”InTurkey,GhadaandZiadwerefamiliarwith
their surroundings and knew where street vendors sold balloons for the purpose of keeping phones dry in the water. Noor knew differently in the house in
Libya. The one man who sealed off his phone did not explain or respond when
the others laughed. Noor rather knew, with the environment, as his phone
was soaked. Putting a phone in a balloon or sealed plastic bag might seem a
small and insignificant action, but it can literally mean a world of difference
as a functioning phone might facilitate a connection to the right smuggler at
another point in the journey. As such, putting a phone in a balloon and jumping into the water are also digital practices that affect knowing in and beyond
the situation itself.
Another aspect of knowing as emplaced during irregularized migration pertains to the ways people counter physical obstacles. Traveling without rights
often entails traveling away from street signs and other parts of the built environment. Rather than built environments that are intended to facilitate movement, irregularized migrants often encounter built barriers such as fences that
are specifically designed to stop their movement. This often forces irregularized
migrants to navigate through uninhabited and inhospitable areas in which
the relation between where they are and where they seek to go can be even
more difficult to establish. Many of the people I spoke with ventured into such
areas only when led by smugglers, but some also endeavored to do so on their
own,guidedbyGPSsignalsensuredthroughlocalorinternationalSIMcards
andanextra,chargedbattery.Omar,ayoungSyrianmanwhotraveledwith
hisyoungerbrotherandtheircousintoGermanyoverTurkeyinthesummer
of2015,didsoseveraltimesduringhisjourney.Atonepoint,heusedGPSto
navigate through a desolate area in Macedonia with a larger group of people. It
was night, and the light from phones was the only illumination, serving to provide guidance not only on the map but also on the ground. When they reached
Serbia,Omarandhiscompanionswererejectedattheborder.Tryingtofind
analternativeroute,OmarusedGPS,buttheywerestoppedseveraltimesby
the military. Finally, they found a way to cross the border that entailed moving
over a small creek by climbing on some thin branches functioning as a makeshiftbridgeinaforest.Omardescribedtheclimbasdifficultandexplainedthat
they had to run after having crossed, as they were met by police. Later, on the
border of Hungary, they were unable to find a smuggler to help them cross.
They walked on their own for several hours in the borderland and eventually
decidedtotrytocross.Ontheothersideoftheborder,theywereonceagain
faced by police and ran into a forest to hide. There they walked for about 10
hours with no food or water.
Perilous Navigation | 107
They were not simply moving through a physical environment that could be
made navigable with a map. They were necessarily conjointly moving through
a social environment in which their status as irregularized migrants and their
lack of rights significantly affected both their own movement as well as the
intensity of the moving environment. The substantial military and police presence was brought on precisely by the presence of irregularized migrants such as
themselves—along with restrictive migration policies. With limited knowledge
of the place they were in and how it was connected with other places, and with
no knowledge of a particular police presence in the surrounding area, it was
difficult for them to find a viable path between where they were and where they
wanted to go. Further, the physical hardships were draining their energy. When
they eventually exited the forest, the police arrested them. This time, they
werenotabletorun.OmarandhisgroupspentanightinajailinHungary,
wheresomeoftheirvaluableswere‘confiscated’andtheywereforcedtogive
their fingerprints. Knowing through digital practices, then, is a bodily act that
involves not only looking at a smartphone screen, but also—often simultaneously—walking on dark, unruly surfaces, maintaining balance when crossing a
creek, and running from military and police until hunger and fatigue take their
toll. It is through the interaction with phone screens, branches, and unruly
surfaces as they move through their journeys that irregularized migrants know
and thus are able to navigate. And while their navigation might at times benefit
fromusingGPS,itisimportanttokeepinmindthatGPSinformationfavors
the built environment, which is designed for those with rights. In this process,
knowing is not simply a matter of obtaining available information.
WhileOmarandhisgroupusedGPStogetasenseofwheretheywerein
relation to where they wanted to go, smartphones also often played a role in
connecting irregularized migrants with smugglers. Irregularized migrants did
their best to connect with smugglers with whom they could establish some
leveloftrust.ThisisinaccordancewithZijlstraandvanLiempt’s(2017:177)
finding that “when smugglers are embedded in migrants’ networks, it is less
likely that migrants will be betrayed. When the relationship is more anonymous, things are more likely to go wrong” (see also van Liempt 2007). Some
irregularized migrants would pay smugglers to take them by boat, car, or van,
but at times smugglers were paid simply for showing the way on foot.
GhadaandZiadalsohadtroublecrossingtheborderfromSerbiatoHungary. They arrived at the border in mid-September 2015, around the time
when Hungary had finished its border fence and the European Union and its
member states were in disarray regarding how to handle the growing number
of irregularized migrants from Syria and other conflict and disaster zones.
The Hungarian border was closed, and several violent episodes took place.
Initially,GhadaandZiadhadplannedonwalkingfromGreecetoDenmarkor
Sweden,whereGhadahasfamily.TheyhadboughtaEuropeanSIMcardthat
108|Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
worked internationally and therefore had access to the Internet, so they would
useGoogleMapsontheroadtofindtheirway.However,itwascleartothem
that they would not be able to cross this border on their own. Through people
who had already made the journey, they were able to contact someone who
had a number for someone who had a number for someone else. Finally, they
arranged to meet with a smuggler, who walked with them for hours, leading
them to a place where there was a hole in the fence at the border. They climbed
through the fence and eventually arrived at the side of a big road. Here a car
stopped briefly to pick them up and take them to Austria. The role of the first
smuggler was not simply to show them to the hole. Being familiar with the
local environment and receiving continuous updates from colleagues on his
phone about police presence, he at times ordered them to stop walking and
hide in the bushes until the coast was clear.
Comparably,Omarandhisgroupdidnothaveknowledgeofpolicemovements in the surrounding area and were thus forced to run when they encounteredpolice,unlikeGhadaandZiadwhocouldpre-emptivelyhide.Thedigital
practices of the smugglers in Ghada and Ziad’s case served to open up the
place they were in to the surrounding places. That is, by connecting the movementsofpoliceinthesurroundingareatotheplacetheywerein,Ghadaand
Ziadwereabletomakeaspectsofwhatwasbeyondtheimmediatesurroundings knowable and to connect it to the place they were in. Digital practices can
thus be significant as they can serve to open up places to other places by making them known and situating them in relation to each other, thus facilitating
navigation. The places that irregularized migrants navigate toward are known
in ways different from the immediate surroundings, yet this knowledge is also
partofthemakingoftheimmediatesurroundings.WhenGhadaandZiadwere
stuck at the closed border crossing, this crossing remained a closed border as
long as their knowledge of the environment constituted it as closed, thus affecting their potential navigation in the given place. When they succeeded in meeting a smuggler, who knew a hole in a fence so many kilometers in a certain
direction, the immediate surroundings were no longer an impenetrable border,
but became part of a path with a direction that could only be fully known when
it was enacted. Knowing changed the way they positioned themselves in the
environment. In this case, the knowledge of the smuggler—and their relative
trust in him—enabled navigation not only toward a hole in a fence, but also
toward a position in the yet to come.
Navigation, then, is never in relation only to the immediate surroundings,
but also in relation to their connection to other places—or at least how this
is perceived. Ghada and Ziad’s meeting with the smuggler was established
through digital practices, which connected them to a chain of people who
could endorse the next person in the chain, allowing for a relative trust in a
stranger—something that was difficult for them to establish in the volatile and
Perilous Navigation | 109
insecure environment at the border. In this way, certain kinds of knowledge are
prioritized, not as definitive knowledge but rather as an ongoing engagement
with a moving environment.
Conclusion
When irregularized migrants navigate through environments that are largely
designed for those who have rights, they know as they go while the environment
is continually moving, with borders opening and closing and police shifting
positions—and approaches—around them. Digital practices often play into the
knowledge making of irregularized migrants and can particularly help in opening up places to other places, making the place one is in known and situating it
in relation to other places. However, knowing is made difficult for irregularized
migrants not only by the lack of rights, but also by the moving environment,
which makes knowledge particularly slippery as situations continually change.
Furthermore, the fear, fatigue, and uncertainty that irregularized migrants experience when navigating in these dangerous and shifting circumstances make
knowing even more difficult, as bodily states affect perception. Thus, understanding how irregularized migrants know with digital practices entails looking
beyond what can be known and focusing on how things are known. I have
sought to do so by engaging with digital migration studies and anthropological
theories of knowing. First, I have challenged placing emphasis on information
precarity and digital infrastructures during irregularized journeys, advocating
instead for a point of departure in the emplacement and embodiment of knowledge that incorporates both the difficulties of knowing in a moving environment
and the implications of danger for knowing bodies. Second, by bringing instability and danger into the anthropological theorization of knowing, I have pointed
to the shifting capabilities of knowing bodies, suggesting that an anthropology
of knowing must also attend to how people know in situations of distress.
Acknowledgments
ThisresearchispartoftheinterdisciplinaryprojectDIGINAUTS—Migrants’Digital Practices in and of the European Border Regime, which is based at Aalborg
University, IT University of Copenhagen, and the University of Copenhagen and
isfundedbyVELUX.TheprojectcarriesoutethnographicfieldworkinGreece,
Germany,andtheDanish-Swedishborderlandwhilealsoworkingwithquantitative data related to these three sites (see https://www.en.cgs.aau.dk/research/
projects/diginauts/).
110 | Nina Grønlykke Mollerup
Nina Grønlykke Mollerup is an Associate Professor in Ethnology and at the
Centre for Advanced Migration Studies (AMIS) in the Saxo Department, University of Copenhagen. She was trained as an anthropologist and holds a PhD in
communication. Her research interests include journalism, activism, refugees,
revolution, conflict, archiving, technology, and sustainability. Her work has
mainly focused on Egypt, Syria, and Scandinavia. She has published in the
International Journal of Communication and Journalism Practice, among others. E-mail: ninagm@hum.ku.dk
Notes
1. I am indebted to the refugees and solidarity workers who shared their
extremely personal and deeply affecting stories with me. I carried out parts of
the fieldwork with Marie Sandberg, and I am further indebted to her for her
sharp and generous insights through all stages of the research.
2.SeeKaufmann(2018)forasimilaryetmorestructuredapproachtofollow-ups.
3. I speak non-native Egyptian Arabic, which is largely mutually intelligible with
Syrian Arabic. I recorded all interviews in Arabic, and I am indebted to Alaa
Almeiza for translating and transcribing them.
4. The names of research participants have been changed to protect their privacy.
5. The name of this Facebook group is Syrian slang, which is very expressive and
difficult to translate. It refers to temporary waiting or transit places of those
whohavebeenexiledorarehomeless,literally,‘thosecarryingbags’.
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Perilous Navigation
Social Analysis, 2020
This article explores navigation when knowing is intrinsically difficult. It looks at how irregularized migrants know during their perilous trips to and through Europe, focusing particularly on the significance of digital practices on these journeys. Based on retrospective ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Syrian refugees in and around the Danish-Swedish borderland, the article seeks to engage with digital migration studies, arguing that an understanding of irregularized migrants’ navigation, whether with or without digital practices, must involve the emplacement and embodiment of knowledge. Second, the article brings experiences of instability and danger into the anthropological theorization of knowing in order to explore the shifting positions and capabilities of knowing bodies....Read more
