On the Use of Visual Methods to Understand Local Immigration Politics

67© The Author(s) 2021 K. Nikielska-Sekula, A. Desille (eds.), Visual Methodology in Migration Studies, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67608-7_4 Chapter 4 On theUse ofVisual Methods toUnderstand Local Immigration Politics AmandineDesille 4.1 Introduction Non-textual ways of communication have always taken up a substantial part of the geographer’s toolbox: “photographs, aerial photographs, satellite images, maps– and the application of GIS and GPS, so-called “geomatics” (Thornes, 2004, p.787), are taken for granted in academic geographical practice today” (Schlottmann & Miggelbrink, 2009, p.1). Beside these representations of space, stills and moving images have also been produced in very early geographical works relating to everyday lives, place, housing, urban development and identity. American filmmaker Robert Joseph Flaherty, best known for his pioneering documentary Nanook of the North (1922), was himself a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. The popularity of images has grown further recently (Burgess & Gold, 2015; Cresswell & Dixon, 2002; Kennedy & Lukinbeal, 1997) and human geographers have too participated in the structuration of the “visual” as a field of study, supporting an interdisciplinary, participatory and critical1 agenda (Hawkins, 2018). New technologies, their lower cost and friendly-use, and the democratization of practices have therefore pushed visual methodologies forward, generating new practices beyond maps and aerial photographs. This chapter, although based on a research project developed within geography, contributes to this interdisciplinary agenda. As reiterated in the 1 Visual ethnography, at its beginnings, was associated with the colonial project (Pink, 2006, p.5). Even though this seems in the past, Pink has observed that “Some recent publications on visual methods have (misguidedly) set out to discredit contemporary visual anthropology through criticism of its colonial roots and the observational projects of its mid-twentieth-century past (for example Smith etal., 2000; Holliday 2001)” (Pink, 2006, p.15). A. Desille (*) Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 68 introduction of this volume, the focus on people who have experienced migration makes more sense here, than the disciplinary internal debate on the visual. With the broader adoption of visual methodologies, producers of still and moving images find themselves in an already overcrowded visual landscape. In geography and other disciplines that address international migrations, the need to consider the impacts of visual production has become even more acute during the crossMediterranean migrations that have reached unmatched media attention in Europe from 2015 on. Consequently, three sets of questions, often actualized (Raulin etal., 2016), have reemerged: one associated with positionality, reflexivity and interpretation; the second, related to ethics; and the third is concerned with participation, collaboration with participants to the research, and reciprocity in general. In this chapter, I will present the making of an ethnographic film,2 which I filmed during a research project in geography carried out from 2013 to 2017 and entitled Victory Day. Hence, the project hereby referred to is a “researcher-created” or “researcher-initiated” production of visual data (Ball & Gilligan, 2010; Pauwels, 2010). The footage was taken mostly in the street or in public buildings. As Raulin etal. have argued, at the moment when we take shots of actors of street performances “what reciprocity did we establish with them? Furthermore, what did we show, what was the part of interpretation through the photographer’s eye? What social or ethnic invisibility were we entitled to denounce, what to make readable, how to make visible without stigmatizing?” (2016, p.71).3 Bearing in mind this objective -“How to make visible without stigmatizing?”–, I would like to offer some preliminary answers with regards to the production of moving images, in particular when this production takes place in marginal places and involves the participation of persons who have experienced immigration. The first section of the chapter will address the national context of the filmmaking, Israel, and its implication for the planning of the film. The second section will describe more in detail the conditions of the shooting, and the “sensory experiences” recorded and collected. Moreover, in this section and the one that follows, I hope to show that the use of the camera helped to grasp the complexity of the participants” experiences, the way they interact with one another within the place they inhabit, in a deeper way than traditional collection methods would have permitted. The fourth section focuses on the editing and montage process, and the choices I have made to tell the stories I recorded. Notably, I will address the shortcomings of Victory Day to introduce the larger context to an audience unfamiliar with Israeli periphery and with its immigrant residents. The last section describes the reactions of the participants, as well as the reactions of a broader academic audience when the film was screened. With this piece, I hope to contribute to several points this book wishes to address. As a matter of fact, the chapter provides a reflection on the use of film to capture political actions, specifically the ones targeting immigrant groups. Secondly, it 2 I published a piece in the francophone journal e-migrinter in September 2019 on similar thoughts. However, this chapter is not a translation of this piece. 3 Author’s translation. The original quote is: “Dès lors, quelle réciprocité instaurer avec ces acteurs de street performance? En outre, que donnait-on à voir, quelle était la part de l’interprétation par le regard du photographe? Quelle invisibilité sociale ou ethnique était-on en droit de dénoncer, que rendre lisible, comment rendre visible sans stigmatiser?” (Raulin etal., 2016, p.71) A. Desille 69 shows the extent to which filmmaking relates to experiences of the participants involved, and to the sensorial experience of a place. With this, it builds on previous works that have highlighted the potential of moving images to represent the sensory, experiences and intersubjectivities (including Rouch, 1978; Gibson, 1979; MacDougall, 1998; Pink, 2009; Ferrarini, 2017). Thirdly, it tackles the ethics of working in conflict cities, and even more specifically, when participants take a hawkish stand in that conflict. 4.2 Filming inIsrael For scholars working in places where migrations represent a substantial or disruptive social phenomenon, or working in places enduring conflict or violence, the production of moving images usually takes place in a visually overcrowded space and raises constant ethical questions. As a point of fact, how could I avoid participating in the “spectacle” of migration (De Genova, 2013; Debord, 1967), or of the conflict that took place in Israel and Palestine? I had to engage with a reflexive process to overcome this issue and produce images diligently. A first solution was to inquire outside of the large urban centers of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In the project I undertook at the time, I meant to conduct research in “ordinary cities” (Robinson, 2006), which meant to acknowledge the relevance of smaller cities, located outside of political, economic and socio-cultural networks, when conducting research. This had implications for the shooting of a film, and I aimed at producing images in a place that was usually invisible, and where media production was marginal. The film was thought to convey sensory experiences, in order to render the invisible seen and heard. Even if my intention was to distance myself from mainstream media, engaging with participants with a camera bore some risks. In fact, the city I set the film in, Kiryat Shmona, is not completely marginal in the media. Because of its geographical location, some kilometres away from the Lebanese and Syrian borders, revived tensions can strongly disrupt the ordinary. As I have mentioned elsewhere, “the particularity of life at the frontier has been recuperated, notably by Mizrahi social movements initiated by the African and Asian immigrants directed to the periphery from the 1950s, and more largely by the Israeli right. In fact, “Israeli politicians and media further create a sense of threat, intensifying the sense of living on an exposed frontier“ (Thorleifsson 2013)” (Desille, 2018, p.448). More recently, Kiryat Shmona residents themselves have been reinvesting their collective narrative, as illustrated by the grassroots project “Memories” and the project to establish a national museum. Even though Kiryat Shmona does not always fit what the term “ordinary” could imply, it still represented a secondary urban center, an “everyday-life place” (Schnell & Mishal, 2008), where I could study the extent to which migration structures the place. A second dimension of my reflection concerned the people and their actions. Equipped with a camera rather than a recording device, I could capture bodies, gestures, non-oral data and material data not only on a place but also on the people that inhabited it. The recording of non-oral discourses there relates to a turn in social 4 On theUse ofVisual Methods toUnderstand Local Immigration Politics 70 sciences, where the sensory (Pink, 2006) becomes a substantial concern. The camera enables the recording of sensory experiences; the montage, to represent it; and the screening, to invoke the senses among viewers. Additionally, and I will develop this idea more in detail in the next section, the researcher also takes part in this sensory experience. As Pink argues: “ethnography is a reflexive and experiential process through which understanding, knowing and (academic) knowledge are produced” (2009). She adds that the various works produced around senses and social sciences “draw our attention to the corporeality and multisensoriality of any social encounter or interaction – including not only the relationships between research participants but those between ethnographer and research participants” (ibid). In short, the filming process enables to act, record, represent and invoke this level of sensory experiences, through interactions between individuals (including the filming researcher and the filmed participants). In that sense, I adopted an “observational style”. Observational– including direct and vérité– filmmaking has been the style of predilection of David MacDougall and Jean Rouch (Macdougall, 1998; Rouch, 1978). It focuses mainly on the subjective lives of the filmed subjects, and entails a reflexive approach by the filmmakers, which I will come back to in the section below. In order to seize these experiences, I asked permission to film the person who would become the main character: Dr. B., an immigrant from Russia, deputy mayor of the city and in charge of immigration-related matters. We agreed upon my participation in two events. I later understood these specific time-space events, involving cultural mechanisms (e.g. ceremonies or rituals) as “vignettes” illustrating the relation between society and space, and aimed at recording how relations establish and unfold at this specific time, in this specific place. Thus, I was concerned about where and with whom the events I chose to shoot would take place. The first event was the organization of the national elections in Kiryat Shmona in March 2015, where Dr. B. was running the campaign for the national party he is a member of; and the second, the organization of the commemoration of the Second World War, in May 2015, in which he takes an active role. A last remark I wish to make before turning to the filming itself, is that of the plot. As a matter of fact, ethnographic filmmaking, if it cannot be entirely “directed”, does entail planning. In the process of imagining a scenario, I believe that, more than planning the scenes I could shoot, I mainly set rules for myself. I decided not to orally intervene, or I might say, direct, during the shooting (although in the following section, I acknowledge that my presence itself generates forms of direction). I chose to follow the main character where he goes and film interactions when they happened. This was clearly different from the in-depth encounters I organized before with Dr. B.: I did not have questions prepared to guide the conversation and he did not have lines prepared. In fact, “[w]ith film, you have to shoot events and activities at the time they occur. If you don’t catch them then, they’re lost forever” (Barbash & Taylor, 1997, p.3). A rather different situation occurred during classic interviews, where the stories are told a posteriori, and are already given coherence by the participant (Delory-Momberger, 2010; Ferrarotti, 2005). The following section therefore addresses more in depth what happened during the shooting process. (Figs.4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8) A. Desille 71 Fig. 4.1 Screenshot of the film Victory Day (Desille, 2015). The municipality of Kiryat Shmona, a city in northern Israel, organizes a memorial day for the 70th anniversary of the Victory of the Allies of WWII.At this occasion, Russian-speaking war veterans are gathering together Fig. 4.2 Screenshot of the film Victory Day (Desille, 2015). On national elections’ day, the deputy mayor of Kiryat Shmona, organizes the local campaign for the party he supports, Israel Beitenu. Here in the local office of the party 4 On theUse ofVisual Methods toUnderstand Local Immigration Politics 72 Fig. 4.3 Screenshot of the film Victory Day (Desille, 2015). Here close to a poll station Fig. 4.4 Screenshot of the film Victory Day (Desille, 2015). Here he checks that everything is organized properly at a poll station A. Desille 73 Figs. 4.5 and 4.6 Screenshots of the film Victory Day (Desille, 2015). MP Orly Levy-Abukassis is meeting with the residents of Kiryat Shmona 4 On theUse ofVisual Methods toUnderstand Local Immigration Politics 74 Fig. 4.7 Screenshot of the film Victory Day (Desille, 2015). Here the deputy mayor speaks with young residents about M.Putin’s politics Fig. 4.8 Screenshot of the film Victory Day (Desille, 2015). Here he checks the first estimates of the results in the evening A. Desille 75 4.3 Reducing theDistance? As mentioned in the introduction, the equipment available to researchers has become much more accessible and user friendly. However, I rented a semi-professional camera to make sure that the result will be neat and easy to edit. This “professional look” actually helped me circulating with Dr. B.As for recording the sound, I equipped Dr. B. with a neck mic, which allowed me to record all conversations and to receive his implicit authorization. Indeed, with the micro attached to his shirt, there was a tacit agreement that I would hear everything. Ball (2014), among others, has fruitfully engaged with the notion of informed consent. While this quote relates to photographs, I still believe that the neck mic played the role of the “pose”: While some photographers claim to eschew posing by subjects in their work; similarly to those social scientists aiming to uncover meaning through consent, others have pointed to the valuable role that offering the subject the opportunity to pose for a photograph can give to the overall meaning of an image. (Ball, 2014, p.156) The presence of the camera also provided me with an agreement from residents present around the scenes. Becker assures that “It is probably easier to be unobtrusive in public places where you are not known as an investigator and it may or may not be easier if you are carrying a camera. In many situations carrying a camera validates your right to be there; as a tourist, as a member of the group recording the scene for their purposes, or as a representative of the media” (Becker, 1974, p.18). My presence with the camera in hand took a different dimension than in previous encounters. “Recent discussions of phenomenological ethnography (Katz & Csordas 2003) also insist that embodiment is ”the common ground for recognition of the other’s humanity and the immediacy of intersubjectivity” where the body becomes the ethnographer’s research instrument (2003: 278)” (Pink, 2006, p.46). This was brought forward by Jean Rouch, for whom cine-trance meant a triangular relation between the one filming, the camera and the ones filmed. The filmmaker, he assures, is not himself, but a mechanic eye and an electronic ear (Rouch, 1978). Rouch has not reduced the filmmaker to an absent body. On the very contrary, most of his work attempted at making the filmmaker and the filmmaking process visible to the audience. The one behind the camera and the camera itself, together, have an impact on the filmed event. What is interesting though, is that this triangular relation means that filming becomes an embodied, involved and participating experience (de Hasque, 2014). Jean-Frédéric de Hasque even coins the “dance metaphor”, where the filming body, while accompanying every move of its filmed characters, “dance” with them (ibid). Placed behind the camera, I started recording the multiple interactions created by every encounter between Dr. B. and other residents, supporters, opponents and colleagues. Dr. B. led me to them: he walks close by, stops to talk to people, aware that 4 On theUse ofVisual Methods toUnderstand Local Immigration Politics 82 The interest of harnessing visual methods lies in giving a voice and making visible a group that is usually unknown. In that sense, it does fulfill questions of reciprocity, less explicit with traditional research methods. When it comes to issues linked to working in situations of political tensions, coming with a camera enables accessing different dimensions of the field while at the same time, using it as a shield when ideological distancing was crucial. Capturing sensory experiences became more obvious at the moment of screening. Here, the value of the film– which equates a publication- is measured. In fact, it is not only about recorded images of places and people in the field, but about the narrative power of the visual production. For the audience, the senses are also invoked. Reactions of unease, discomfort, anger are part of what images can do to us. The use of visual methods differs from a text which can be ignored more easily. Understanding what is at stake inlocal politics in a frontier town such as Kiryat Shmona and understanding the tensions between the different groups is important to grasp a fuller picture of the regional politics, and particularly of the conflict. However, this first exercise came with its limitations. Mostly, being engrossed in my PhD project, it was hard to step back and plan contextual images which could fill the knowledge gap for a less informed audience. As a matter of fact, the less visible the place, the less vocal the group, the less we know and can read between the lines. How can you create a story while avoiding the intrusion of expert voices (either as voice over, or as bits of interviews to present the problem)? A second question which in my opinion deserves further exploration is related to the inclusion of questions of reflexivity within the film, and not only in commentaries made in a written form after the edition is finalized. Thirdly, this film is also one of an outsider and it was a one-person project. The collaboration of the participants was during the shooting, while most of the editing was done by myself. Other chapters of this volume have opted for more participatory post-production processes (see Trencsényi & Naumescu, Piemontese, MacQuarie, chaps. 7, 10 and 16, in this volume), which seems crucial for future projects. References Achouch, Y., & Morvan, Y. (2013). Les utopies sionistes, des idéaux piégés par une histoire tourmentée : kiboutz et villes de développement en Israël. Utopies et Justice Spatiale, (5). Avanza, M. (2008). 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