Topographies of 'borderland Schengen' : Documental Images of Undocumented Migration in European Borderlands

Analyzing recent documentary films dealing with undocumented migration at the Schengen Area's fringes and against the backdrop of what has been termed the European refugee crisis, Jan Kuhnemund investigates the interface between migration discourses and image discourses. As an analytical framework, he conceptualizes "Borderland Schengen" as a visual-political transnational space emerging from the interplay of migration movements and border policies. Putting the spaces and iconologies of "illegal" migration under scrutiny and aiming at establishing their protagonists as subjects, Kuhnemund reads the films as attempts at discursive participation and as an aesthetic political practice.