‘Now You See Me’: Refugees Looking Back at the EU’s Border Camp Watch in Lesvos

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore refugees’ countervisuality, an emancipatory protest against the visuality of border watchers. Focusing on the social media campaign ‘Now You See Me, Moria’, led by refugees in the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesvos, we examine their digital rights claims against camp conditions and the EU-funded new Closed Controlled Access Centre. By analysing refugee-produced images and captions shared online, we unpack how refugees challenge the Greek authorities’ watching out for, of, and over refugees. Our findings indicate a power struggle wherein the authorities employ invisibilisation to shield the camp from external scrutiny while hypervisibilising and disciplining refugees inside the camp, proudly advertised and visibilised to the wider public as exemplary. We clarify how refugees strive to look back, be seen, and be recognised by a transnational audience in their just call for decriminalisation and humanisation, countering the authorities’ visuality regime. We conclude by discussing the significance of emancipating our ways of seeing refugees from an anti-democratic visuality regime imposed by state authorities.