Migrant struggle and communication on the Brazil-Venezuela border: Between sieges and breaches.

Abstract

The images presented in this essay capture the measure of urgent things, which encompass the desire to communicate, to be connected, to know/give news, to send resources, to have access to leisure, to comply with bureaucracies and thus ensure basic conditions of affections, rights and dignity of life. The scenes were observed in the Brazilian state of Roraima, in the cities of Boa Vista and Pacaraima, in the last four years, in the context of community research and projects on communication and access to connectivity by refugees, which I had the opportunity to participate through the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR/Brazil). In addition to scenarios of exclusions and inequalities, characteristics historically printed to the Global South, the images also reveal subtle spaces of creation and reinvention of subjectivities, solidarity, the production of gaps amid limitations that permeate the experiences of people who are moving. 

In a synthesis between misery and magic, communication and connectivity appear in photographs as strategic places to observe power disputes, digital inequalities and tactics that unfold in the migratory dynamics on the border between Brazil and Venezuela. In times when the digitization of life is becoming increasingly pressing, thinking about communication in a citizen  way, promoter of a leading collectivity, as proposed by Freire[1] (1983) and Kaplun[2] (1985) is still a bet for which it is essential to fight. 

[1] Freire, P. (1983). Extensão ou comunicação?. Editora Paz e Terra. 

[2] Kaplún, M., & García, M. (1985). El comunicador popular. Quito: Ciespal.