Diversion and Dissent: the Lifestyle Vlogging of Undocumented Migration
Bibi Imre-Millei, Online Assistant Editor
November 3, 2020
Heath Bunting working on BorderXing. Image Credit: https://www.antiatlas.net/heath-bunting-borderxing-en/
Over the summer, 25 year old Moroccan vlogger Zizou received a flurry of media attention for his vlogs, which depict his undocumented migration from North Africa through South America to the US. Zizou’s vlogs, filled with advice and adventure, are shot on his iPhone. The vlogs exemplify what the documentation of undocumented migration looks like in the modern world, consumed by both those who need the information for practical reasons and those who are fascinated by Zizou and his adventurous, perhaps dangerous, lifestyle. Both entertainment and political dissent, Zizou and his contemporaries exemplify how protest around borders and bordering practices has become globalized and accessible on the modern internet. Though Zizou has been in jail for his adventures (and was bailed out through crowd-funding from fans), his youtube channel, Zizou Vlogs, is updated regularly for his 200,000 subscribers. His Instagram has over 40,000 followers, and in one of his latest posts, he is pictured in Mexico with a mariachi band member.
Zizou Vlogs, and others like him, are a continuation of a long trend of art around undocumented migration, created to be entertainment, resistance, and roadmap. The vlog channel is reminiscent of Heath Bunting’s work in the early 2000s. Around this time, other artists and activists were coming together to create global networks which pioneered freedom of movement such as the No Border Network and deletetheborder.org (a site which is not accessible in Canada). Heath Bunting’s work, most famously, BorderXing Guide but also Status Project, plays with the power dynamics of migration by finding loopholes in border administration systems. Bunting also pokes at power by turning the Global South-Global North dichotomy on its head, asking those residing in the Global North to show credentials before entering the the BorderXing Guide website, but allowing those residing in the Global South free access.
Of course, not all art about undocumented migration or undocumented migrants can be used as a roadmap to repeat their routes. For example, in 2018, the New York Times profiled 13 artists who dealt with immigration in visual art, none of which could be said to be creating roadmaps. Artists like Valarie James, who creates art from the discarded items of undocumented migrants at the US-Mexico border are undoubtedly making a political statement (as some would argue all art, or all good art, does) but they are not designing a way to recreate a route. There is other art, though some might not call it that, that simulates the undocumented experience also without necessarily creating a roadmap. For example in 2007, a New York Times reporter went on the caminata nocturna, or night time hike, in Hidalgo Mexico, which simulates the border crossing undocumented of migrants take into the US as a way to raise awareness for what migrants go through. Reports from PBS in 2013, discussed a Mexican amusement park which allowed tourists to experience the border crossing experience. From the details listed, it seemed to be the same attraction the New York Times profiled in 2007.
The current structure of the internet has allowed those following in Bunting’s footsteps, like Zizou, to be able to be everywhere, but nowhere, detectable enough by hundreds and thousands of fans, but often undetectable by authorities. Bunting himself has been refused entry to the US due to his work on multiple occasions, which led to him missing the opening of Status Project. But creators like Zizou do not have to establish this kind of presence as an artist, they don’t need their works exhibited by the Tate Modern. Instead, they are largely able to control their content, while receiving millions of views. There are multiple other vloggers like Zizou, and much of their content remains advertiser friendly enough for them to make a living. As The Economist reports, these vloggers offer livestream advice sessions for how to get to Europe on a budget, undocumented, often allowing migrants to bypass traffickers and other dangerous or exploitative situations.
It seems that while the internet has created space for a kind of global citizenship, it has, crucially, created space for global dissent and protest. Of course, this is most obviously evidenced in the global nature of the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, as well as the growing proliferation of information about local issues on social media such as Instagram activism graphics on everything from the Beirut explosion to the plight of the Miꞌkmaq. But it is clear from Zizou and his contemporaries that dissent can be more clandestine and practical as well. Most of the North African vloggers who give advice on border crossings speak in specific North African dialects, and when they give information they mix these dialects with Arabic, as well as random numbers and letters. Unlike the traffickers, who they will advise you to avoid, these vloggers are trying to circumvent an unfair and exploitative system. They make money by giving those who watch them for lifestyle content a welcome diversion from their lives, while giving those who need it most access to information.