Connected Sahrawi refugee diaspora in Spain: Gender,social media and digital transnational gossip

Introduction

The impact of digital technologies on forced migration processes has been a focus of scholarship in recent years (Gillespie, 2017; Leurs, 2017; Smets, 2017; Witteborn, 2015). The maintenance of networks and social relations across borders has become a central concern. However, the points of view and situated experiences of refugees are understudied. Focussing on gender relations may uncover the often-paradoxical roles that these new digital practices generate. According to recent analyses, in geographically dispersed populations, the maintenance of community social structures across boundaries implies accepting certain kinds of surveillance, such as transnational gossip which operates as a gendered mechanism of control (Dreby, 2009; Skolnik et al., 2012). Gossip constructs social norms and values that serve to maintain connections and strengthen the sense of belonging (Subramanian, 2013). Digital technologies allow members of a community to monitor and influence each other through social media platforms such as Facebook. Users are, for example, increasingly expected to detail their everyday lives on personal social media profiles, which may generate gossip. In keeping with the idea that one should be wary of techno-optimism (Leurs and Smets, 2018), this article offers a situated analysis focused on the impact of digital transnational gossip on specifically situated groups, as well as the strategies developed to confront it. With a view to serving social justice in the context of forgotten humanitarian disasters, this article addresses experiences of Sahrawi people, an under-researched group at the eye of one of the world’s longest standing refugee crises, resulting from the unresolved Western Sahara conflict.

The incomplete decolonization process by Spain and the subsequent partial invasion of the Western Sahara territory by Morocco (and initially also Mauritania) in 1975 caused an armed conflict between Morocco, Mauritania and the liberation movement of the region, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia El-Hamra and Rı́o de Oro (known as the Polisario Front). The war forced the Sahrawi people to move to a refugee camp in southwest Algeria, where the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was proclaimed in 1976 as a state in exile which continues to this day. The dynamics of the Cold War influenced the conflict; Morocco achieved support from Western countries – such as France and the United States – and the Polisario Front was endorsed by Algeria, Cuba and Libya. In this context, political aspirations linked with the exile experience generated a new environment in which the Sahrawi people reinforced their cultural identity beyond their tribal heritage. As participants in the ideological reproduction of the collective (Yuval-Davis and Anthias, 1989), Sahrawi women took on a relevant role due to their prominence as cultural symbols, their role as transmitters of the nation’s values and their particular emancipated experience from certain gender norms (Allan, 2010). The relevance of Sahrawi women in the creation of the refugee camps and their role in the conflict were perceived as vital for the Sahrawi people.

Since the early days of exile, the Polisario Front has promoted gender equality through the creation of the National Union of Sahrawi Women (UNMS) as a relevant structure of the movement. Following the example of other nationalist movements of the continent, the UNMS became a platform for women’s participation in many aspects of society. Initially, Sahrawi women achieved an important role in camp management, and they occupied a central role in social structures. In the Polisario Front, they became political figures who participated actively in the creation and consolidation of the SADR (Solana, 2016). However, symbolic roles of women in politics were not accompanied by social changes related to gender equality. ¹ The reproduction of gendered traditions across generations contradicted the hegemonic political discourses that accentuate the gender equality of the Sahrawi revolution (San Martín, 2009). During the armed conflict and afterwards, the Polisario Front’s promotion of an educational policy, based on cooperation projects with countries such as Cuba, Algeria, Libya, Syria and Spain, allowed young Sahrawis, especially women, to study outside the camps. Those who travelled to Cuba stayed for over 10 years and grew up in a different cultural, social and economic context, which affected them personally. After this period, refugees who had studied in the Caribbean and other Western countries arrived at the camps with social codes and norms that clashed with those of camp society, which is still very traditional in many aspects (San Martín, 2009). In particular, the domain of gender relations is one that returnees view as problematic. Instead of through radical confrontation, some women are trying to change these unequal relations step-by-step.

In 1991, the Polisario Front and Morocco accepted a ceasefire that included an agreement to hold an internationally monitored referendum. During this period, most men left the army and returned to the refugee camps. This situation changed the role of women in camp management, as they started to be relegated to their own khayma ² (house or tent). Thus, the increase in care work for women over these years – despite UNMS campaigns on women’s education and participation in the Sahrawi cause – had an impact on assumptions about gender roles. Despite hopes for an imminent end to the war, the referendum never took place. The refugee camps became a form of ‘time prison’ (Caratini, 2006) and the Sahrawi refugees started to migrate away from the camps to their former colonial ruler, Spain. ³

The need to achieve a better future beyond this humanitarian space has generated a new incentive to migrate and try to improve family welfare through remittances. This new mobility has helped create a new diaspora that shares characteristics with other, similar communities, such as the Palestinian and Somalian diasporas, collectively known as refugee diasporas (Horst, 2006; Van Hear, 2009). This term is used to denote a dispersed population of refugees and asylum seekers further afield from the first asylum countries where the refugee camps are located. In the Sahrawi case, migrating away from the camps was initially perceived as a form of treason against the Sahrawi project (Gómez, 2011) due to fears those moving away would abandon the cause. This generated problems - for example, Polisario is not transparent about its role in facilitating or obstructing travel documents needed to move abroad (Wilson, 2012). However, the demonstration of migrants’ continued political activism for the Sahrawi cause in their new countries settled the situation, as it became clear they played a relevant role in lobbying for the resolution of the conflict.

Currently, according to Wilson (2012), the Sahrawi community in Spain is diverse and includes students, short-term and long-term workers and families with children. Some have acquired Spanish citizenship, which facilitates their ability to travel to and spend extended periods in the camps. For that reason, authors such as Gómez (2011) and López (2016) have highlighted the particular pattern of Sahrawi migration as a circular mobility which helps ‘preserve strong links with those who have remained in the refugee camps’ (López, 2016: 39). Despite these trips, generational differences have appeared, due to the aspiration of certain young Sahrawis to build their own lives outside the camps (Gimeno, 2007). Young Sahrawis raised in Spain or living with a Spanish host family ⁴ experience the Sahrawi culture in a more distant way (López, 2016). In particular, gender norms are being challenged by some Sahrawi women who have not denounced their Sahrawi identity and roots, but who seek to align it with a more cosmopolitan identity. In this sense, it is important to examine how gender norms are being reconfigured by Sahrawi women as part of their specific role championing the Sahrawi cause.

Helped by digital technologies, the Sahrawi refugee diaspora continues to maintain contact with peers left behind in their ‘home camp’. The arrival of smartphones in the refugee camps in the 2000s has allowed residents to communicate instantly with their fellow Sahrawis outside the camps. Daily conversations consist of exchanges of information about people’s lives, experiences and new personal relations in Spain. These activities have increased digital transnational gossip, which acts as a form of gendered social control that contributes to reinforcing the politics of belonging (Yuval-Davis, 2011). Gossip acts as a tool for establishing group norms and protecting the boundaries of the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983).

Drawing on the work of digital migration researchers outlined above and taking gender as a main axis of analysis, this article offers empirical insights into the paradoxical digital practices experienced by Sahrawi women who are part of the refugee diaspora in Spain. Looking at these paradoxical roles surfacing on social media platforms, we argue that digital transnational gossip has particular implications for Sahrawi women in Spain who assert their claim to belonging, despite the criticism that they receive, and develop their own digital strategies to avoid or confront gossiping practices. As Cohen (1997) highlights, diasporas are very heterogeneous; thus, this article seeks to account for the heterogeneity and diversity of life experiences among refugee diasporas, as well as to offer situated, digitalised intimate experiences.

Connected refugee diasporas: social media and context collapse

In recent decades, Europe has been involved in social processes related to migration and digital mediation. The narratives of forced migrants in Europe and the relevant role that digital technologies play in their everyday lives have been prioritized in several research analyses (Leurs, 2017; Witteborn, 2015). Digital mediation has become the focus of new, specific situated analyses which explore the daily experiences of forced migrants and the ways in which digital technologies help maintain the sense of co-presence (Diminescu, 2008). Digitally, refugee diasporas are tightly connected as a relational continuum (Leurs and Ponzanesi, 2018) that affirms and strengthens locally situated communities.

Although most such studies examine specific cases of diasporic communities, all focus on the intersection of new media usage with axes of ethnicity, culture, gender and class and the ways in which these features are linked with the construction of belonging as a performative and dialogical digital narrative. As highlighted by Horst (2006) in her article on the affordances of digital technologies for refugee diasporas, electronic media plays an important role, reinforcing the sense of belonging and reducing distances. It enables group discussion among people who are dispersed geographically, and it provides a specific public space to increase the refugee diasporas’ agency. Following this article, a variety of scholars have focused on the use of the Internet by forced migrants. Witteborn (2015) emphasizes the specific social media usage practices and the technologically mediated sociality related to asylum seekers in Germany. She argues that while digital technologies offer new opportunities for transnational family intimacy, at the same time they pose challenges, because people are ‘held accountable for meeting family expectations in virtual interactions’ (Witteborn, 2015: 2). Forced migrants could fail to meet family expectations, which may cause stressful situations on social media as well as enrich gossip-related practices as a mechanism of social control.

Moreover, migratory experiences also imply bringing together different social situations, which could affect Internet usage. This brings us to boyd’s (2011) concept of context collapse, which emphasizes the blurring of boundaries on social media and the implications of dealing with different social contexts. For some people, social media becomes a tricky and challenging environment on account of the need to reconcile ‘groups of people who reflect different social contexts and have different expectations as to what’s appropriate’ (boyd, 2011). Following this concept, Davis and Jurgenson (2014) propose distinguishing between two types of context collapse, which differ in the intentionality of the users to assume the blurriness of social media. Context collusion refers to the intentional unity of various contexts to increase the affordances of interaction between them, whereas context collision denotes the chaotic results of overlapping different contexts. Both types emphasize the complexities of managing public and private spaces on social media. Despite research showing the limitations of this approach (Costa, 2018), we would like to argue that in the context of migration context, the transcendance of physical boundaries and the opportunities to experience different cultural and social norms could challenge the relationship within families in terms of maintaining their values and social norms despite distances (Menin, 2014). For instance, in the case of refugees in Europe, Dhoest and Szulc (2016) have shown the implication of context collapse caused by the impact of disclosing their gender and/or sexual selves on Facebook. The presence of conservative family and friends has direct implications for the way these refugees use social media, as well as how they construct their own gender identities on social media.

Methodological considerations

This article draws evidence from social media ethnographic research (cf. Postill and Pink, 2012) with young Sahrawi women in Spain between February 2016 and October 2018 conducted as part of the main author’s PhD dissertation. Following a non-digital-media-centric approach (Pink et al., 2016), the research process involves interviewing users and collecting relevant digital material in blogs, social media platforms (particularly Facebook) and face-to-face encounters or events related to the Sahrawi cause and especially to the Sahrawi feminist movement. Their offline interview narratives are triangulated with relevant digital material gathered from their profiles, groups or pages. This approach, based on offline and online research techniques, addresses the interactions between face-to-face and digitally mediated experiences and seeks to illustrate how it may achieve greater understanding of everyday media practices of members of a specific community.

Focusing on Sahrawi refugee diaspora experiences, the analysis presented in this article draws from the narratives of 13 informants. These include women between the ages of 17 and 32 years who were born in refugee camps and had been living in Spain for anywhere between 3 and 21 years, with some periods in the refugee camps. All hold Spanish citizenship, except five, one of whom has the status of stateless person by the Spanish government. ⁵ Participants live with their Sahrawi families, except three who live with a Spanish host family and two who live alone. In addition, participants have a high level of education: four women have pre-university studies and nine have a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Two interviews were also conducted with the managers of the Facebook fan page analysed in this article. The interviews were semi-structured and conducted in Spanish. Research participants were contacted through face-to-face events and snowball sampling, due to their particularities as a vulnerable group (Browne, 2005). Some interviews were conducted via Skype in those cases where interviewees preferred to participate anonymously. Also, in this article, pseudonyms have been used to preserve anonymity. Interviews were followed up by digital participant observation through the collection of material on websites and blogs related to the Sahrawi cause and the following of particular Facebook profiles of the research participants, Facebook groups in which they are involved, and specific Facebook fan pages recommended by them. All this was accompanied by WhatsApp and Messenger conversations.

Moreover, the study is based on feminist approaches to research practices (Hesse-Biber, 2014; Ríos, 2012), which point out the relevance of understanding the testimony of vulnerable groups and women whose voices might not have been heard. At the same time, we are concerned about power differences in the research process and their implications for vulnerable groups such as refugee diasporas. For that reason, we deal ethically with participants through the creation of an honest relationship, based on equality, respect and confidentiality. We are aware of our positions as non-members of the Sahrawi community and we carefully prioritize informants’ words and experiences to continually re-examine our position in terms of class, race and gender and take seriously our responsibility for the informants in the research process.

Sahrawi women in Spain and digital transnational gossip

In 2015, during the Goya Awards Ceremony for Spanish Film, the Sahrawi actress Mariam Bachir appeared in a revealing dress. That night, there was an intense debate on Facebook among Sahrawi community members inside and outside the refugee camps. Some people criticized her, claiming that she was not representing ‘the real Sahrawi woman’, while others welcomed her courage in representing other ways of being Sahrawi. Muna, a Sahrawi woman of 28 years of age who studied in Barcelona, explained Mariam Bachir’s impact on the Sahrawi social media community,

She has several pictures, and if you click on any you can see the two Saharas. The two Sahrawi girls. The one who says, good for you, you have gone further and not every Sahrawi girl can do that, and the other one who says, this is not correct, because it is bad for our society, and you are going to change us.

Through this example, Muna expressed one of her concerns related to the blurred borders between different audiences on social media. In Barcelona, she lives with her parents, but much of her family continues to live in the refugee camps. An active participant in an association for young Sahrawis, she spoke of the challenge of social media for Sahrawi society:

The Internet is revealing a problem that everyone knew was there. Before social media, this topic was not so widespread, but there are girls who grew up here, with a Western education or with Spanish host families, who are used to wearing short sleeves in the heat or discussing certain topics with their parents. But then they return to the camps, and their families explain to them that these things are completely unacceptable in our society . . . So, each family tries to solve this problem in a private way, but now (with social media) all of society can see everything that someone publishes [. . .] so now this problem is being revealed.

As mentioned before, Sahrawi women who studied in Cuba or Spain had been socialized in different social codes, and this led to misunderstandings among members of the fellow refugee society. In particular, the imbalances in certain gender relations were described as Westernized, and those who had lived abroad were demanded to readapt to the camp’s social and religious patterns. These behaviours were dealt with privately, but they were also commonly known due to the spread of gossip between refugees. This resonates with Caratini (2006: 19), who argues that the stalemate of the conflict, together with the situation in the refugee camps, has led to change the traditional open living space of the Sahrawi family to a more private way, which has contributed to the amplification of social surveillance and gossip in the refugee community.

Muna’s explanation shows that the advent of digital technologies has extended this practice into the social media landscape and has particular consequences on gender issues. In fact, gossip treats women and men differently, but stresses women in particular in strong moral overtones. Like Muna, other young Sahrawi women refer to Mariam Bachir’s case to highlight certain digital practices that they have experienced. They explain how their Sahrawi Facebook friends often question pictures of them living their everyday lives in Spain without their traditional dress, the milḥafah, or participating in party-like leisure activities. Other studies with young women from North African countries (Jyrkiäinen, 2016; Menin, 2014) have noted these kinds of control practices over the lives and bodies of women. However, the distinctive patriarchal control of Sahrawi women results from the intensifying effect of the exile (Wilson, 2016) and the conflict zone scenario, which reinforce control over women and their bodies as the symbolic place to inscribe their particular moral order (Benhabib, 2006).

According to some authors, in dispersed populations, transnational gossip articulates social norms and values that reinforce a sense of belonging to a certain community (Dreby, 2009; Subramanian, 2013). Following Gluckman’s (1963) concept of gossip as an effective political tool which maintains the unity of social groups, this particular form of social control provides information about others and, at the same time, creates a mechanism of influence through the management of this information. Gossip is a relevant challenge in multi-sited transnational fields due to the continued exchange of information between those who move and those who stay. In this sense, digital technologies, through their immediacy and transnational reach, have increased the spread of information beyond boundaries. Social media platforms such as Facebook have contributed to the reconfiguration of gossip as a social activity that happens in the absence of the subject, due to the ability to learn about someone’s everyday activities and comment immediately about this person, no matter where she is geographically located (Subramanian, 2013).

Conclusion

The literature on digital technologies has rarely focused on refugee diasporas and their paradoxical relations with communities in their home camps. Digital transnational gossip is one element of control that would appear to reconfigure the sense of belonging in diasporic spaces, but which has rarely been considered in situated digital intimate experiences. Looking at the Sahrawi case, this article has shown evidence of the impact of digital transnational gossip as a mechanism for maintaining refugee community ‘purity’ (Malkki, 1995). Digital technologies have given rise to a transnational public space where private or family practices may be revealed and subsequently questioned by the whole community in the interest of preserving traditional gender norms. This article has described the negative consequences women face when they become the objects of gossip, while at the same time pointing out the different strategies these women take to counter and avoid gossip and subvert community gender norms. Using different profiles, restricting the audience with Facebook’s privacy settings, or not posting photos are some of the individual strategies used to limit the impact of digital transnational gossip in everyday media usage and deal with context collapse. However, focusing on collective strategies is also pertinent to identify forms of mobilization against the community’s hegemonic gender discourse.

The social media landscape is configured as a space of co-presence where connections inside and outside the refugee camps influence the construction of the Sahrawi cultural identity. Diasporic spaces reconfigure multiple senses of belonging, but it is relevant to explore the particularities of the Sahrawi migratory process, due to its close link with the Sahrawi political cause. All of the interviewees actively participate in political events, and yet some people do not consider them to be Sahrawi, because of their Western attitudes or lifestyles. This raises the question about the fear felt by those in the camps of possible contamination of the Sahrawi’s cultural identity, which is used to reinforce their political cause. In this sense, the maintenance of gender norms and the strengthening of the role of women as transmitters of cultural values are directly linked with the use of gossip as a mechanism for limiting ‘Western contamination’.

In sum, this article illustrates not only the negative consequences of digital transnational gossip but also the strategies employed by certain Sahrawi women to defend their own belonging and their way of life. During the research process, these women expressed their feelings about the future of the conflict, as well as their personal aspirations to assert their ‘Sahrawiness’. Thus, the intimate digital narratives of Sahrawi women show the intention of many Sahrawi refugees to spread different ways of belonging and subjectivities. The practise of aswāqá on Facebook and its consequences for women’s everyday lives have collapsed these women’s digital context. Finally, the Sahrawi case allows us to reflect on the isolation that exists on the margins of the visibility that the Internet offers for refugees in general, while also allowing us to rethink the Internet’s impact on distinctly located gender dynamics.