Images of migration should not only be about the victims

In this new article, DIIS researcher Sine Plambech discusses the implications of the ways in which fiction films and documentaries increasingly bring the themes of migration and human trafficking to the big screen.

Building upon existing substantial scholarly critique of such films and representations, the article discusses the possibilities of displaying images and making films about migration that do not fall into misleading and sensationalised representations of the migration crisis and of migrants as victims.

Plambech draw upon two films about migration and trafficking that she has worked on as an anthropologist and filmmaker: Trafficking (2010) and Becky’s Journey (2014). The point of departure is that films often carry a potential for (political) impact as they usually reach much wider audiences than academic papers.

Films on migration and human trafficking could show how policies impact on, and have real consequences in migrants lives. Instead we often see continuously reproduced simplistic images of suffering. To circumvent this situation and produce counter-narratives an argument of this article is that films on these issues should attend to more „open-ended‟ narratives igniting continuous scrutiny of the political economy that sustains migration and human trafficking.

First and foremost, Plambech argues that stories worth telling should not, as is commonly the case, depend upon simplistic stories and/or images of suffering; rather, stories worth telling often lie in the complexity and not in readily available sensational simplicity.