Working from below: Exploring the subversive quality of technological affordances along the Mediterranean

In the last few years, civil society groups working from below the established core of power have been acting as contestant parties in border sites, particularly in the Mediterranean zone, by repurposing technological devices traditionally utilized for state security and control. For their task, these groups engage through the development of networks and channels of communication to enable informal systems of knowledge, which imply technological affordances for purposes that contribute to the freedom of movement and anti-hegemonic claims. What emerges thus are forms of activism mobilized through subversive affordances, that is, the (re)appropriation of available technologies to serve as tools for the dissemination of know-hows, the organization of tactics for survival and the configuration of systems of information, mutual care and solidarity. Following the operation of a concrete network – the Alarm-Phone-Initiative – this article analyses the scope and reach of such subversive affordances in order to offer a critical interpretation of ‘disobedient’ civic practices that help indeed strengthen a democratic space of humanitarian engagement and dissent.