Symbolic bordering: the self-representation of migrants and refugees in digital news

In this article, I combine theorizations of the selfie as an aesthetic and technological practice of digital self-representation with a theatrical conception of spectatorship, inspired by Adam Smith, in order to argue that the selfie has the potential to operate as a significant ethico-political spectacle in the spaces of Western publicity. I exemplify my argument by using the remediation of migrant and refugee selfies in mainstream news as a case study of ‘symbolic bordering’ – as a technology of power that couples the geo-political bordering of migrants in the outskirts of Europe with practices of ‘symbolic bordering’ that appropriate, marginalize or displace their digital testimonies in Western news media.