Scrolling Down One's Life: The Importance of Information and Communication Technologies for the (forced) Migrants in Greece

Situated in the field of digital migration studies, the thesis adds to emerging research on the terrain of 'the everyday' in relation to migration and ICT use. Specifically, it examines the importance of Information and Communication Technologies in the lives of the (forced) migrants who arrived in Greece after the border crisis of 2015 and role of self-organised groups as (communication) proxies to them. Through a multi-sited ethnographic approach, the thesis explored how (forced) migrants constructed their everyday realities in a Housing Squat, a Refugee Camp and an Immigration Detention Centre, the role played by ICTs in a context of liminality and the factors affecting their access to and use of such technologies. Theoretically, the project draws upon the work of Agamben (2005) on the State of Exception, Foucault’s (1986) concept of Heterotopias and De Certeau’s (1988) theory of the Practice of Everyday Life. Fieldwork conducted between 2017-2018 concluded in three main findings: first, the study found that relations of in/formal hierarchy existed in all three researched sites. These were not always top down but also spread across different groups of people and migrants employed different tactics to surpass them, when possible; second, that ICTs are valuable among migrants for their everyday, as they offer a range of practical and sentimental uses crucial for their survival, integration and planning of the future and more importantly for combating the persisting state of liminality; thirdly, the study found that relations of solidarity were created between migrants and self-organised groups that extended well beyond the latter’s function as communication proxies. Solidarity groups played a role either in the course of affecting the migrant’s everyday life or supporting them in their struggles for freedom and survival through communication and other practices.