Abstract
Mediated Lives: Waiting and Hope among Iraqi Refugees in Jordan by Mirjam Twigt is a rich, ethnographic account and critical analysis of how technology helps refugees to make sense and make do in prolonged periods of waiting and displacement. Twigt explores how technological forms of communication, whether through the internet, phone, television, or social media, are much more interwoven into refugees’ lives than is currently understood – particularly by academics and policymakers in the Global North. The book shows readers how, despite our understanding of technology as an objective, unambiguous tool, it is in reality a multilayered discursive resource that is constantly presenting refugee populations with as many questions as answers.
In Chapter 1, Twigt draws attention to the fact that the media often present prolonged refugee crises as ‘new’ emergency situations that require an immediate solution, while in reality, they are often complex, long-term crises that sporadically become newsworthy and quickly return to being ignored. Indeed, many fail to acknowledge the reality that most refugees are living in a chronic, precarious state of limbo. This is further discussed in Chapter 2, where the author attempts to disentangle the waiting experience and the bureaucracy associated with technological communications between Iraqi refugees and UNHCR Jordan. We begin to explore how technology is inextricably linked to the anxieties of waiting, and how digital communications fuel this worry instead of alleviating it. As we move into Chapter 3, this is unpacked further, and it becomes clear that connectivity has merely produced further misinformation and encouraged an ‘always on’ culture of constantly awaiting a text or phone call. Despite this, UNHCR Jordan does not necessarily have more information to provide, further highlighting refugees’ struggle of waiting and exacerbating their desire to seek exit from this precarity.
Chapters 4 and 5 move towards a focus on refugees’ everyday experiences of coping with waiting. Chapter 4 highlights how (in)security permeates all matters of the refugees’ environments and how interconnected and multi-faceted feelings of (in)security are. In particular, the author highlights that ‘feeling secure goes beyond physical integrity’ (p. 88) – economic and social networks are also at risk of corrosion – and discusses the potential impact this could have on the sense of normality that refugees seek to hold on to in prolonged periods of waiting. The discussion of technological communication methods is highlighted again here (particularly in relation to ontological security) and extended to how they can aid or hinder the temporary home-making process. Twigt particularly notes the importance of being able to stay connected with loved ones via both the phone (direct communication) and television (staying in touch with events back home). Chapter 5 critically reviews the notion of hope and how hope can be a positive motivator for perseverance but that this is not a long-term alleviator for the difficult circumstances that Iraqi refugees find themselves in. Again getting back to the role of technology, the chapter highlights how digital connectivity can provide a sense of hope but should not be seen as a solution or pacifier to everyday precarity. Rather, digital connectivity is a product of being in the prolonged waiting period.
Chapter 6 unpacks the notion of how innovation in technologies that are designed to ease or aid the refugee situation (such as apps) are in fact underpinned by a neoliberal resilience-orientated approach to humanitarianism. This in turn inevitably reinforces power imbalances between refugees and non-State actors and allows global capitalism to permeate the refugee population via the private sector. This is an incredibly interesting chapter that could, arguably, be an entire book in itself on the links between colonialism, digital technology, and refugees (particularly in the post-COVID-19 era). In Chapter 7, Twigt explores the idea of accountability and how digital technologies between UNHCR Jordan, and the Iraqi refugee population can be characterised as hierarchical and one way. The author suggests that there are some quick fixes that could be implemented to improve this dynamic (such as providing more accessible information), but that ultimately the aforementioned information deliverance strategies used by the UNHCR (as highlighted in Chapter 3) create an environment of distrust that needs to be addressed on a systemic level. This again could be further explored in the future.
Twigt ends the book by arguing that digital connectivity and technological innovations are not a solution to ongoing refugee crises. Rather, the use of technology is an already embedded practice in the lives of refugees and plays a role in the (dis)connected experiences of daily life in a prolonged period of waiting and displacement. Ultimately, the book offers a key contribution to the field of migration studies by providing readers with a fresh understanding of refugees’ precarity and navigation of the migration process through digital connectivity.