The Digital Civilizations Interviews

• Confronted with a generalized solidification of migration policies, clandestine immigration registers a recrudescence in most of developed countries and becomes a major preoccupation.

According to the press review « Fortress Europe », 8.966 immigrants died at the European boundaries since 1988, among whom, 3.079 disappeared on seas. On the Mediterranean Sea, 6.495 migrants died. In the Sicilian Channel, 2.023 persons died, between Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Malta and Italy, among whom, 1.209 disappeared and 35 died all along the new roads between Algeria and Sardaign Islands; 3.086 persons died in the wide Canarias Islands and Gibraltar Detroit between Morocco and Spain, among whom, 1.277 disappeared; 693 persons died on the Aegean Sea, between Turkey and Greece, among whom 343 disappeared; 553 persons died on the Adriatic Sea, between Albania, Montenegro and Italy, among whom 250 disappeared At present, the immigration theme covers a large number of other disparate themes, such as legal immigration, clandestine immigration, the right of asylum, the right of foreigners to vote, polygamy, Islamic scarf, Islam, the young of suburbs, etc. A better understanding of the migration phenomenon supposes the development of connections between economy, demography, sociology, anthropology, history, geography, politic science and law. At least four elements in this context make the understanding of these interactions crucial:

• The importance of the mobility of men and women and the generalization, across the world and in a region such as Europe, of migration circulations, diversification or complication of their forms, in addition to the transformations they bring to societies and economies ;
• Needs in work labor generated in several economic sectors, or aiming at developing new services ;
• Tensions on the demographic and financial equilibrium of the social protection and assistance systems, and their links with the competitiveness of economies;
• Recurrence of debates, since a century, about social, effective or expected costs of immigration and their impact in France as well as in Europe.

Immigration turns out to be a matter of social and national cohesion, where identity questions, relation to the past, present and future are mixed all together; it poses issues of filiations, affiliations and belonging.

In this context, the information and communication technologies play a key role, as they promote the emergence of new alternative democracies based on the ethnic affiliation or the representation of illegal immigrants. Therefore, they constitute a support and a help for the social work with migrants (excl. adults, school children, recent immigrants); unless they are mobilized as instruments of control and repression at the service of anti-human migration governmental policies (border monitoring, tracing of immigrants, etc.).