Few studies have been conducted in Tunisia on the psychological functioning of sub-Saharan migrants. The current study aims to explore the personality domains of this population. To achieve this goal, interviews were conducted with a sample of sub-Saharan migrants (30 participants). Additionally, personality domains were assessed using the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5). The assessment focused on both the pre-migration and post-migration stages. The results indicate a significant difference in personality functioning between the pre-migration and post-migration stages. This difference pertains to both the total score and the sub-scores of the PID-5, specifically in the domains of Negative Affect, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition and Psychoticism. No statistically significant differences were observed between the PID-5 scores of male and female migrants. Conversely, female migrants exhibited a significant increase in post-migration scores across all assessed personality domains while male migrants demonstrated a significant increase in only three personality domains. These findings underscore the importance of mitigating risk factors within the Tunisian context. For this purpose, the reinforcement of several identified strategies is recommended.

The issue of illegalized migration is now more pressing than ever, particularly in regions like Europe and North Africa. Against this backdrop, this article aims to probe into the dynamics of the European Union’s policy agenda on migration within Tunisia, a key country of origin and transit for migrants crossing the European borders in an unauthorized way. Using a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach, the research investigates a 10,000-word corpus of the European Commission (EC) communications on this topic over the period 2017–23. Specifically, this work combines corpus linguistics methods – concordance, collocation and collocation networks – with the critical discourse analysis (CDA) notions of topoi and topics. The collocation analysis revealed the salience of the topic of legality in the Commission communications, constructing a two-part migration discourse that contrasts the perils of irregularized migration with the merits of legal alternatives. The European Union’s security vs. human rights dilemma was also clearly discernible in the corpus, critically setting securitization policies against humanitarian and democratic values. Equally important, findings uncovered the solution-oriented, pluralistic and comprehensive nature of the European approach to migration within Tunisia and the entire North African region. The study has theoretical and practical implications for the growing body of corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) on migration. Its results can also inform future EU–Tunisia public and policy discourses around the complex phenomenon of unauthorized migration, with a view to better navigating emerging challenges.

Within the context of digital border technologies, this article undertakes an analysis of the use of social media by people on the move. The main case study analysed here consists of social media clips taken during the crossing of the Mediterranean liquid border by young harraga (الحراقة), an Arabic word used in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco to define ‘those who burn the borders’, in other words, those who try to reach Europe from the Maghreb via unauthorized routes. These videos represent an attempt to reframe the mainstream narrative of the undocumented and undesired migrants through what I define as a ‘counter-map of disagreement’. Going beyond the visual regime of criminality and establishing a new paradigm of self-determination and agency, these counter-maps reverse the logic of the border while transgressing it. Through a multimodal analysis, this article examines the Mediterranean border from the perspective of people on the move, who are shaping a new digital gaze and narrative. Rather than viewing borders solely as violent and divisive tools, they depict them as sites of contestation, porous and fluid.

This article draws from the experience of a research initiative and an immersive art project, ‘Windows on the World’ (WOTW), Ritsona Refugee Camp in Greece, in 2022–23. Embedded within a framework that entangles creative arts, educational psychology and cultural studies, the article navigates the experience of resilience for the participant children aged 6–16 years. Taking the thread from the artistic experiences proposed in WOTW, this arts-based research traces how the encounter between creative arts, and in particular music, empowers the children living in protracted displacement. By mapping and analysing experiences of empowerment, cross-cultural integration and transculturation, we seek to produce knowledge on the potential of creative arts for building resilience in fluctuating communities.

In the last few years, civil society groups working from below the established core of power have been acting as contestant parties in border sites, particularly in the Mediterranean zone, by repurposing technological devices traditionally utilized for state security and control. For their task, these groups engage through the development of networks and channels of communication to enable informal systems of knowledge, which imply technological affordances for purposes that contribute to the freedom of movement and anti-hegemonic claims. What emerges thus are forms of activism mobilized through subversive affordances, that is, the (re)appropriation of available technologies to serve as tools for the dissemination of know-hows, the organization of tactics for survival and the configuration of systems of information, mutual care and solidarity. Following the operation of a concrete network – the Alarm-Phone-Initiative – this article analyses the scope and reach of such subversive affordances in order to offer a critical interpretation of ‘disobedient’ civic practices that help indeed strengthen a democratic space of humanitarian engagement and dissent.

To a remarkable extent, diasporic descendants may have lost the ethnic consciousness of their ancestors. However, central European countries still provide them preferential immigration policies, and many scholars studying ethnic return migration propose that the benefits derived from these policies and pragmatic acting of diasporic descendants explain the rise and fall of diasporic descendants’ return. Based on research conducted in western Ukraine and the Czech Republic, this article elaborates on how short-term stays in country of ancestors intensify immigration of diasporic descendants. This process is incentivized by financial support of short-term stays in the Czech Republic, reinforced by the Czech government, and it increases the attraction of the Czech environment making participants more willing to utilize their ethnic roots for the purposes of migration. Preferential immigration policies itself could be the leading principle enabling the specific scope of ethnic return migration, but short-term stays in this specific Czech case also influence the decision of diasporic descendants’ regarding immigration.

Review of: Kala Pani Crossings: Revisiting 19th-Century Migrations from India’s Perspective, Ashutosh Bhardwaj and Judith Misrahi-Barak (eds) (2022) London: Routledge, 242 pp., ISBN 978-0-36776-088-5, h/bk, £124.77 ISBN 978-1-03216-196-9, p/bk, £39.00

Review of: ‘Am I Less British?’ Racism, Belonging and the Children of Refugees and Immigrants in North London, Doğuş Şimşek (2024) London: UCL Press, 250 pp., ISBN 978-1-78735-179-0, h/bk, £45.00 ISBN 978-1-78735-178-3, p/bk, £25.00

This article revolves around fourteen main migration film festivals (MFFs) worldwide, exploring them as an interdisciplinary fertile subject of inquiry and analysis, with a particular emphasis on their social functions. The specific objectives aim at understanding the principles, values, circumstances and dynamics that permeate these cultural events. We assume that MFFs can serve as genuine catalysts of critical reflection and social transformation, fostering more empathetic, inclusive and respectful ways of life. Data have been collected through a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, including semi-structured interviews with film festival directors and curators, non-participant observation and the formal content analysis of festival catalogues, leaflets, flyers, web pages, para-visual texts and media platforms. The theoretical underpinning anchors the study in the intersection between the concept of ‘social profitability’ and ‘social function’. Results show that, despite the economic constraints, MFFs shape public spaces, creating opportunities for witnessing, negotiation and social transformation. However, innovative, disruptive and transformative changes are required to attract more festival goers, especially those in need of altering their perceptions. Moreover, the involvement of migrants in key organizational roles remains a crucial issue that requires attention.

Time in autobiographical writing is central for the construction of the self and a cohesive identity. The autobiographical text balances between being geared towards the future despite its preoccupation with the past, while written from a present perspective relating to the time of writing. Experiences of migration introduce yet another dimension, as migration is movement in both place and time. This article examines two autobiographical texts that address the relationship between self and time in connection with migration: Roberto Lovato’s memoir Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas and Jose Antonio Vargas’s Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen. Vargas’s experience of being undocumented in the United States causes temporal limbo, whereas Lovato sets out to uncover personal family history as it intertwines with El Salvador’s past. Both authors also advocate for change with regard to migration and how particularly those without papers are treated. The memoirs perform work for the future, envisioning social transformation and connecting it to the authors pasts. The narrated selves build on the temporalities of remembering and reconstructing the past and of an activist present.