Perception management – Deterring potential migrants through information campaigns

How are images used in the aim of governing migration? This article probes this question through the example of the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) information campaigns (ICs) in Cameroon, through which it seeks to ‘manage the perception’ of potential illegal(ized) migrants to the European Union (EU). Taking the self-reflexive perspective of a filmmaker who has documented migrants’ rights violations in several projects and is thus struck by the use of imagery of suffering migrants as a deterrent, I first draw a comparison with the practice of colonial educational cinema, which I argue bares many similarities with the IOM’s ICs. Second, I inscribe them within broader trends in migration management, which have in common a simultaneous spatial expansion beyond the EU’s boundaries and a broadening of the domains they attempt to shape. I then attend to the particular ‘media dispositif’ the IOM constitutes in its campaign in Cameroon and question the actual effects of its campaigns.