Migrant potentiality

In the "Summer of Migration" in 2015, the Mediterranean washed both people and shocking images onto the shores of our visual perception. In response to the immediacy and dynamics of flight, borders, fences, and transit spaces became themes in art and culture, particularly in pop music. This was also the case with the music video Borders by the singer M.I.A., which aims to present the "border crossing" as a musical staging. 

M.I.A. clearly aims to aesthetically distinguish her video from prevailing media images. Instead of using real boats, she transforms the refugees themselves into the shape of a boat, with herself as a figurehead carrying well-intentioned purpose, giving a voice to the young men who have fled: "Identities, what's up with that? Your privilege, what's up with that?" (Borders, 0:52–0:56).

Perhaps bold images are indeed necessary to depict what is happening in the world: refugees climbing fences, wading through water, and occasionally lying motionless on scattered boats. In the composition, the singer is consistently centered. As her surroundings gradually fade into darkness toward the end, she remains illuminated in the spotlight, giving her the aura of a potential patron saint. Even though M.I.A., who clearly addresses the mainstream in her work, is not a white representative herself, this type of staging still carries the risk of positioning herself as superior in interactions with refugees, thereby unintentionally reproducing societal inequalities.

By stylizing "being a refugee" as a defining characteristic that overshadows other personality traits, certain groups of people remain marked as outsiders and are often devalued based on national, ethnic, or cultural attributions. I'm not sure whether the aestheticization of "being a refugee" is enough to undermine the practice of othering. After all, the portrayal of people from other cultures does not necessarily reflect the perspectives of the filmed subjects; often, the opposite is true. Even when these subjects become visible, they usually remain voiceless because they are not involved in the writing and filmmaking process. To what extent does this video perpetuate paternalistic proxy discourses and reinforce asymmetric power relations? Does it facilitate the dismantling of discriminatory boundaries between "us" and "the others" and subvert hegemonic practices of definition and representation? And ultimately, does it create spaces for subjective self-representation? To undermine paternalistic advocacy for a "just" cause and fundamentally disrupt hegemonic representation regimes, self-determined constructions of "we" are necessary. The "refugee we" that M.I.A. invokes can fundamentally be interpreted as a rhetorically powerful gesture aimed at constructing a community where nationality no longer functions as the dominant logic for segregation and discrimination. However, the construction of "refugee figures" in M.I.A.'s video remains confined within a specific order of belonging, still linked to asymmetrical power structures without visualizing a possible rupture of the representational space. A future "refugee we" would need to be conceived as inherently diverse, presenting a performatively heterogeneous variety that challenges monolithic and coherent constructions of "we," thereby inviting critical reflection. Based on this conceptualization of migration, the question arises whether migration in M.I.A.'s Borders truly gains agency, autonomy, and potentiality or rather remains in a disempowered state. The quality that could emerge from the "refugee we" status might fundamentally redefine citizenship by acknowledging migration as its inherent condition. However, this proposal remains a highly unlikely utopia in the current political climate. Yet, it is precisely within this improbability that artistic practice finds its most radical power: to imagine alternatives that, for instance, have the potential to produce material effects in cinema.