Visual Securitization

Front matter

i A eer a A a“ er a

IMISCOE Research Se

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Preface

This book is about the role that images produced by transnational humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play in global governance, with particular emphasis on photographs depicting Syrian displacement between 2015 and 2016. The idea of this research originates in the encounter of my two professional lives. For I combine academic research with professional experience as an active humanitarian practitioner during the response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan between 2013 and 2015 and the prior displacement of Iraqis. This experience within the relief sector has critically affected the drafting of this book. Both as a humanitarian practitioner and as researcher, I have developed ambivalent feelings toward the work of transnational NGOs in the Global South. My personal field experience and studies on the humanitarian system have combined to make me skeptical about humanitarian organizations and their intended goals. I am sympathetic with the large body of scholarship that has pointed out the problems related to the universalist claims of humanitarian organizations (Chandler 2001), the neo-imperialist character of many INGOs interventions (Petras 1999), the complicated relation with politics (De Lauri 2016), the intrinsic culturalism of relief organizations (Cuttitta 2015), and the ambiguous role NGOs play in neoliberal governance policies (Duffield 2001a, 2007).

This notwithstanding these sympathies, I am also strongly convinced of the need for transnational solidarity among people and countries that experience dramatic inequalities, especially when conflict and natural disasters destroy lives. I cannot deny being deeply appreciative of the existence of organizations that work according to an ideal of solidarity and that engage on the front line, providing humanitarian assistance to those affected.

I came to design and carry out this study because of these ambivalent feelings. Humanitarian action is crucial and needed, yet there is large room for improvement. My hope is that my study, as an insider who knows that world, could contribute to its improvement. In this sense, a note of caution is in order. Considering the contemporary socio-political context in which I have written this book, one which is regrettably marked by xenophobic and nationalistic feelings in Europe and elsewhere,

Vili Preface

I often find myself in the difficult position of criticizing the “good guys,” those who in a particular historic moment were (and still are) trying to affirm positive values of international solidarity in an otherwise rather racist environment. The intention of this book is not to attack humanitarian actors for the sake of criticism. For a world without relief organizations would be even more intolerant, ignorant, closed, and negligent than the one we live in today. It is important, however, given the crucial role now played by international humanitarianism, to reflect on how its discourses and practices affect the attempt to create a better world.

Chandler, D. (2001). The road to military humanitarianism: How the human rights NGOs shaped anew humanitarian agenda. Human Rights Quarterly, 23(3), 678-700.

Cuttitta, P. (2015). Humanitarianism and migration in the mediterranean borderscape: The Italian-North African border between sea patrols and integration measures. Borderscaping: Imaginations and practices of border making, 131-140.

De Lauri, A. (2016). The politics of humanitarianism. Power, ideology and aid. IB Tauris.

Duffield, M. (2001a). Global governance and the new wars: The merging of development and security. Zed Books Ltd.

Duffield, M. (2007). Development, security and unending war: Governing the world of peoples. Polity.

Petras, J. (1999). NGOs: In the service of imperialism. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 29(4), 429-440.

Pisa, Italy Alice Massari

Acknowledgments

It is my great pleasure to thank all the people without whom this book would not have been possible. Starting from my doctoral studies, from which this book began, would like to thank Francesco Strazzari who has shown his interest in my research project and supported its implementation throughout the years. I also owe my deepest gratitude to Anna Triandafyllidou, whose commentary, critique, support, and advice have made this book infinitely better. I hope I have been able to incorporate her broad scope of knowledge and keen analysis in my dissertation.

A special thanks to my friends Mjriam, Monica, Sharif, and Marcello, who have shared their knowledge and sharp criticism with me. They have supported this study in so many ways, hosting me during fieldwork, facilitating networking, forwarding papers, briefs, and artistic works’ news relevant to my research, and, most importantly, organizing trips around the world to take a break from the study and enjoy their company. Among them, I would like to especially thank Mjriam, who despite her hectic intellectual and personal life has always found the time to read and comment my work. In my new life in Florence, I am indebted to Serena and Alessandro, who have been the perfect companions for entertainment and academic exchange, and the Cafecionados families that have believed in the importance of friendship when social life has been challenged by COVID-19 containment measures.

I am profoundly grateful to my unconditionally supportive family: my sister Mila, my parents Giovanna e Paolo, and my mother-in-law Mariangela who have been there in every moment of need to allow me to work, focus, spend time in the field, attend conferences, and rest, while they were taking care of Mariangela, Pietro, and Antonio. They have travelled last minute by car, train, and plane to make this book possible. They have facilitated relentless travels between Florence, Amman, Milan, San Diego, and so many other places while making the kids feeling always at home. In this endeavor, they have been helped by my extended family, Zio Luigi, Enrico, and Enzo, who have supported in any way they could our crazy life. To all of them goes my gratitude.

x Acknowledgments

I owe a special thank you to my kids Mariangela, Pietro, and Antonio. They have put up with two working and travelling parents, bore my stress, and shared our roaming life around three continents over the past years. Although at times I had been desperate for extra time for my work, I cannot avoid appreciating how their being around, jumping, singing, shouting, and playing has allowed me not to lose my mind in the project and enjoy life with them.

Finally, to Luigi, my life-companion. Words cannot possibly express my gratitude for the unique pleasure of a life spent in his company. To him goes my debt beyond the countless suggestions, comments, and feedback he has given me on this book. We have written, researched, discussed, and travelled together for 14 years by now, and I hope to continue to do so for the rest of our lives.

Note

This book is based on the study of four major transnational NGOs’ photographic representation of Syrian displacement between 2015 and 2016: Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE, and Médecins Sans Frontiéres. I would like to thank MSF, Save the Children, CARE, and the artist Khaled Hourani for their kind permission to use their images. Oxfam did not grant permission.

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Contents

PartI The Theory and Methodology of Visual Securitization

S A Visual AQproa:i0266ksdcaweigieesbaceenuseogecaitewes Keun

Part II Humanitarian Representation and Migration Governance 4 Humanitarian NGOs and Global Governance: One, No One

© N A wm

List of Figures

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©Khaled Houtani, The Blue Figure 20l T. eccirni 2 OAlessandro Fenso/ MS PF assii nasin 105 ©CARE, Facebook Syria Response October 2015.00.00... eee 110 OSave the children Anna Pantene vse: scsscicsssassaiissersssatetecensssstietsise 116 ©CARE, Facebook Syria Response 29 September 2015 «0.0.0.0... 122 ©Pedro Afmestre/ Save the Children. siroce 141 CARE, Syria Response 24 July 200 S vssccsscnesesssavcsseesnevsseavysenonanaves 145 ONSE 20] J 0025055 seassayassansnuascaeneasetcanle ire Er AR 152 Anna Fantela/Save the children orisun 158 ©CARE, Syria Response 19 December 2016... 174

XV

Chapter 1 A) Introduction Geek for

“How do we see refugees? The refugee has become a multifaceted symbol, the most prominent political figure of our time” states the brochure of an art retrospective by Khaled Hourani, a Palestinian artist reflecting on the reduction of refugees to abstract symbols of victimhood by humanitarian representations. In the eyes of the artist, the blue figure (Fig. 1.1), so common in relief organizations’ visual depictions, is the migrating human being, without a specific national, religious, ethnic, or gender identity. Yet, the visual landscape of contemporary displacement is anything but abstract. Images of overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean, refugee camps, improvised shelters along migration routes, children and families in need, and people stranded behind fences and walls have come to constitute a powerful reminder of contemporary conditions of displacement for people on the move. Yet, the question remains: how do we see refugees?!

This is a book on the role that transnational humanitarian NGOs play in migration governance through visual representation. It offers an innovative account of how relief organizations’ visual depiction of Syrian displacement contributes to reproduce and reinforce a securitized account of refugees, one in which refugees are framed in terms of threat. Images of overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean Sea, refugee camps, improvised shelters along the migration routes, children and families in need, and people stranded behind fences and walls have come to constitute a

! Throughout my work, I will use the term refugees, migrants, displaced people, and people on the move interchangeably. This is, on the one hand, a practical choice since the different terms are often used as synonyms by humanitarian NGOs. On the other, I agree with the studies that have highlighted the (in)appropriateness of the various labels, pointing out how they do not represent the complexities of displacement and they contribute to creating categories of ‘deserving’ versus “undeserving” asylum seekers. (see among others Zetter 1991, 2007; Long 2013; Crawley and Skleparis 2018). I agree with Monsutti on the need of a “new theoretical sensitivity” critical of “the effects that a national frame of reference may have on research related to refugees and other displaced persons” (Monsutti 2005, 18). For these reasons, and in the attempt to dilute the rigidity of these labels, I will use all terms as synonyms of people on the move. When observing how specific humanitarian organizations use one or other of the terms, I will report it accordingly.

© The Author(s) 2021 1 A. Massari, Visual Securitization, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71143-6_1

ELLE

Fig. 1.1 ©Khaled Hourani, The Blue Figure 2017 powerful reminder of today conditions of global displacement. While visual representation is certainly media-driven today, more than ever, it is humanitarian organizations — and NGOs in particular — who while doing their relief work produce the great bulk of the images presented to the public that contribute to shape our understanding of the refugee issue. In this context, how do transnational humanitarian NGOs represent refugees? What are the implications of this visual depiction within the larger role that relief agencies play in global governance?

The text is based on a multi-method and multi-modal analysis of the role that humanitarian NGOs now play in global governance. The visual investigation focuses on the photographic material representing Syrian displacement published by four major transnational NGOs (CARE, Save the Children, Médecins Sans Frontier, and Oxfam) over the years of the so-called “European refugee crisis’, between 2015 and 2016. The book analyses a dataset of over 1000 images through a combination of visual methodologies: visual content analysis for a preliminary classification; iconography for its potential in identifying visual trends and patterns in a large body of images, and visual social semiotics for its attention to visual signs and means of representation within a situated cultural and social context. Simultaneously, the exploration of humanitarian visual material has been combined with fieldwork in three of the countries that have hosted, and still host, some of the largest populations of Syrian refugees (Greece, Jordan and Lebanon). Interviews with key informants were combined with analysis of the organization’s guidelines and strategic documents.

This book adopts a critical approach to study humanitarianism, humanitarian visuality, and their interrelation with global governance and securitization with the ultimate goal of shedding light on the political, cultural and ethical dynamics at play. It shows that the way through which transnational humanitarian organizations engage in the international political arena is manifold. On the one side, the different NGOs’ organizational culture (including mission, vision, approach to humanitarian action, funding strategy and advocacy objectives) shape the distinct roles that each of them has chosen to play in their interaction with state-nation politics and in global governance. On the other side, it empirically demonstrates how relief agencies engage with world affairs through the analysis of their visual production.

In this sense, inspired by the securitization theory elaborated by the Copenhagen school, the book argues that humanitarian NGOs’ visual representation of Syrian displacement is contributing to the securitization of the refugee issue. Through visual analysis, it empirically demonstrates how the securitization process takes place in three different ways. First of all, even if marginally, through the reproduction of mainstream media and political accounts that have depicted refugees in terms of threats. Secondly, and more consistently, through a representation of Syrian displaced people that, despite the undeniable innovative aesthetic patterns focusing on dignity and empowerment, nevertheless continues to reinforce a visual narrative around refugees in terms of victimhood and passivity. In so doing, the book does not want to deny the efforts NGOs are currently making to challenge victimizing and essentializing representations of displaced people. On the contrary, they are to be commended. However, there are still many aspects that without further problematization end up impairing their attempts, something this book aspires to untangle. Third, through the dialectic between what is made visible in the picture and what is not, transnational humanitarian NGOs reinforce a representation of Syrian refugees that reduces the portrayed individuals to abstract humanitarian subjects, eventually eliding any political claim and agency that Syrian people on the move might have.

The book argues that there is also another important dynamic at play. While on the visual level NGOs continue to securitize and depoliticize Syrian refugees (despite dramatic recent changes in the way humanitarian information is communicated), the analysis of NGOs’ policy and strategic documents, and the interviews with practitioners have also revealed a countertrend. Indeed, relief agencies put a great deal of effort into trying to empower the beneficiaries of the assistance and also to go beyond the traditional humanitarian communication that — as humanitarian actors they are themselves perfectly aware of — unfairly depicts refugees in terms of victimhood and helplessness. In this sense, despite the consistency of contemporary visual representations in portraying refugees with no (or very limited) agency, it also seems that the continuous intellectual engagement and efforts put into changing this depiction is creating what Yurchak defines as the “minute internal displacements and mutations into the discursive regime in which they are articulated” (Yurchak 2013, 28).

These micro mutations are visible to a certain extent in the wider range of aesthetic topics that some NGOs present to the public. For example, when the represented subjects encompass the actual threats looming over people in their countries, in the hosting countries and along the migration routes (such as perpetrators of violence, border apparatus, law enforcement, fences, and detention centres), and the complexity of displacement condition not only in terms of humanitarian need, but also in terms of everyday life, community solidarity, and mundane details not necessarily linked to the experience of loss. It is in expanding the visual patterns used to portray refugees into a photographic portfolio that humanitarian organizations have the opportunity to offer a discourse counterpoising the mainstream, one able to account for the complexities and multiple narrative facets of displacement.

1.1 Contributions

This book intends to make four important academic contributions. First, it sets out to expand the body of literature on migration and securitization by providing a thorough study of visual representational practices of transnational humanitarian NGOs. The analysis will not only touch upon themes such as the changes in aesthetic patterns over time, but will also highlight similarities and differences among the four major relief organizations’ visual registries and narratives. Scholars have shown the different ways in which humanitarianism and securitization interplay (inter alia see Aradau 2004a; Andersson 2014; Musarò 2017; Chouliaraki and Georgiou 2017). A few have pointed out the role that relief organizations play as actors of securitization (Aradau 2004a; Watson 2011). However, none of the existing studies have demonstrated empirically how these dynamics work. This book intends to fill this gap by showing how humanitarian NGOs contribute to the securitization of the refugee issue through their visual representations.

Secondly, in the field of International Relations (IR), nobody has systematically carried out an analysis using visual social semiotics. More generally, as Lene Hansen — one of the scholars who has produced the most ground-breaking work on visual securitization — has noticed, very few studies in IR have engaged in the investigation of large bodies of images. Most existing studies have employed content analysis that focuses on the identification of the portrayed subjects. However, none of these works have explored how these forms of content analysis differ or could be combined with other visual methodologies (Hansen forthcoming). Moreover, as Andersen et al. have observed the “most recent “visual security’ work in IR has been on the iconic image and has assumed a ‘powerful intertextuality around the image’ which puts the image ‘in danger of vanishing” (Andersen et al. cited in Hansen forthcoming, 8). This book seeks to address these challenges in three ways. It is based on a large body of images (over a thousand). It combines the content analysis with a more qualitative visual methodology, and it addresses the need to attribute more attention to the image per se.

This study draws on an additional innovative methodological approach. It is not only based on a multi-methods analysis that combines different visual methodologies, but it is also a multi-modal investigation. Thorough visual analysis has been combined with fieldwork in three of the countries that have hosted, and still host, some of the largest populations of Syrian refugees. Since most academic work on images and security has been based on content analysis, by combining it with visual social semiotics, and especially by incorporating fieldwork, this study intends to offer a different understanding of the role and impact of images within the wider context of global governance.

Last, but not least, this book links visuality with governance. This is particularly interesting when one considers that humanitarian communication and governance interplay at different levels. Relief organizations have at certain historical times worked in competition with nation-states and international policies, such as in the case of the aid blockade during the Biafra crisis, and more recently during search

1.2. Why “How Do We See Refugees” Matters 5 and rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean which contrast with European migration policies. At the same time, NGOs’ the funding and advocacy strategies of many humanitarian are tightly connected with states’ political agenda. In today’s highly competitive media environment aid agencies represent the refugees at the same time that they represent themselves, their mission, and goals. In this sense, transnational humanitarian organizations, and their communication practices, merit study because they do political work in a political environment. This book unpacks the dynamics through which relief agencies contribute to the humanitarian systems of governmentality through their visual communication and shows empirically how these two dimensions of visuality and governance do relate to each other and interact.

1.2 Why “How Do We See Refugees’ Matters

Questions around the representation of refugees and the implications of visual narratives in the understanding and management of displacement are particularly relevant in the context of contemporary political debate on the ‘refugee crisis”. It should be noted that I use the term critically because, as many scholars have pointed out, the intensity of arrivals in Europe has neither been a new phenomenon in the history of migration, nor has it constituted the ‘invasion’ that has been presented in public accounts (see among others Fargues 2015; De Genova et al. 2016; Krzyzanowski et al. 2018). The large majority of refugees are still hosted by Syria’s neighbors. It is undeniable that the term ‘refugee crisis” has come to define a specific historical phenomenon that entails important political implications in the way refugees are represented, perceived, and ultimately managed and how societies in countries of destination are deciding to face contemporary questions of international mobility. In today’s securitized context (Krzyzanowski et al. 2018; Mountz 2015; Huysmans 2016) it is therefore particularly interesting to explore the role played by some of the most important actors in the management of the refugee crisis — the humanitarian organizations — which are not commonly associated with the securitization effort routinely performed by other entities (such as Frontex, law enforcement agencies or national border apparatuses).

All this is especially thought-provoking if we consider the role that humanitarian NGOs have been performing in terms of humanitarian governance (Fassin 2011; Barnett 2013) not only in the Global South (e.g. Syria’s neighboring countries), but also at the very centre of the Mediterranean vis-a-vis refugees, European migration policies, and domestic politics. The highly politicized and mediatized debate around refugees’ mobility (Krzyzanowski et al. 2018) has been further intensified by discussions around maritime SAR and accusations made by populist governments that NGOs facilitate irregular migration. NGOs have produced research reports reflecting on the impact of their maritime operations and concluded that not only are the accusations unsubstantiated, but that the “involvement of humanitarian vessels was associated with a significant improvement in maritime safety compared to other periods” (MSF 2017b). Even though legal accusations may, at least for the moment, have diminished (Repubblica 2018b), statal institutions (especially the Italian Ministry of Interior and the Libyan coast guard) were — at the time of writing — preventing SAR operations from happening (Repubblica 2018a; Rome 2017; Cuttitta 2018). The topic remains therefore very actual and relevant as public political debate rages and political scientists have shown how NGOs with SAR operations have contributed to the re-politicization of international waters into a political environment from which they can advocate for humanitarian commitment, political change in migration management, and solidarity (Stierl 2018; Cuttitta 2017), while at the same time they themselves “become part of a hybrid border management system” (Cuttitta 2017, 20).

From a visual perspective the odyssey of people attempting to find better lives in third countries has attracted unprecedented public attention with the publication of sadly famous pictures such as that of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian whose lifeless body was washed up on the Turkish shore after his inflatable boat capsized. Such images, together with those of rubber dinghies full of people arriving on Greek shores, those of child victims of chemical gas attacks and of Syrian cities bombed and besieged have animated national and international public debate. This study is important because it pays special attention to the visual representation of displacement and it unpacks the implications that humanitarian visuality has on the refugee issue. For focus on humanitarian visuality “can help address a gap in visual studies, which in its analyses of the myriad of significant actors shaping the ways in which images are created, selected, displayed, and interpreted — whether we think of national governments, private corporations, media organizations, political movements and campaigns, or lay audiences — has tended to overlook the crucial role of NGOs in informing the visual cultures of national and global civil societies” (Kurasawa 2015, 44).

1.3 Research Design

1.3.1 The Syrian Crisis

This book is based on the analysis of the visual representation of Syrian refugees offered by four major transnational humanitarian NGOs (CARE, Save the Children, Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontiéres) between 2015 and 2016. It looks particularly at the images produced and disseminated online through the agencies’ websites and Facebook pages.

Since the beginning of the conflict in 2012, Syrian people have sought refuge in neighboring countries. At the time of the research, over 5.5 million people were registered as Syrian refugees with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (UNHCR 2017c). Turkey hosted the biggest proportion (nearly three and a half million people), Lebanon registered a million refugees, Jordan

1.3 Research Design 7

655,000, Iraq 230,000 (in addition to 3.2 million internally displaced people), and Egypt around 115,000 (UNHCR 2017c). The humanitarian effort inside Syria has been severely hindered by the very limited access to affected populations, dramatic level of violence, and serious security concerns for humanitarian staff. Most relief has been delivered in neighboring host countries where UN agencies, international organizations and most transnational NGOs have established or substantially enlarged their operations. Starting from March 2012, the coordination of the humanitarian response has been systematized at the regional level under the leadership of UNHCR, as specified under the UN-wide cluster system.” The number of agencies that participated in the Humanitarian Regional Response Plan rose from 34 in 2012 (UNHCR 2012) to 144 in 2017 (UNHCR 2017a). Organizations active in the response to the Syrian crisis mostly include UN agencies, transnational and local NGOs, and a few foundations. Over the years, relief agencies have been working in all sectors of humanitarian interventions (such as health, education, shelter and protection). Their regional aggregated budget has risen from $84,159,188 in 2012 (UNHCR 2012) to $4,400,570,955 in 2017 (UNHCR 2017a).

In 2015, the movement of Syrian people took another direction. For a variety of reasons, including the worsening of the situation in several neighboring countries (Achilli 2015; UN 2015), and opening of the eastern Mediterranean and Balkan route (Fargues 2015), Syrians also started to move toward Europe, where a little less than a million people applied for asylum (UNHCR 2017b). The intensity of arrivals of people of different nationalities — but mostly from Syria — on Europe’s southern coasts, and especially on Greek shores, between 2015 and 2016 led many humanitarian, institutional and academic commentators to talk about a refugee, migrant or Mediterranean ‘crisis (ECHO 2015; UNHCR 2015; Fargues 2015; Pallister- Wilkins 2016). The monthly number of sea arrivals in Europe increased from around 5000 people in January 2015 to a peak of over 220,000 in October 2015, after which it gradually decreased until the end of 2016 (UNHCR 2017d). At the end of 2016 the number of arrivals in Europe drastically decreased, de facto concluding the crisis. What happened was the entry into force in March of that year of an agreement between the European Union and Turkey, the so called EU-Turkey Agreement (European Council 2016). The deal aimed at stopping irregular migration flows from Turkey to Europe by preventing Syrians (and others on the move) from travelling from Turkey to Greece or from Greek islands to the Greek mainland and then onwards into Europe and also by forcibly returning those judged to have moved irregularly.

Together with this new strict migration regime European discourse on migration became increasingly militarized and securitized (Perkowsky 2016; Garelli and Tazzioli 2017; Musarò 2017). This study focuses specifically on this period, from

? The Cluster approach is a coordination mechanism (set by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46/182 in 1991 and defined in the 2005 Humanitarian Reform Agenda) which seeks to improve the coordination of the international humanitarian response. Clusters are coordination groups divided into thematic areas, including protection, water and sanitation, nutrition and health) whose members include major aid agencies working in the respective sectors.

January 2015 to December 2016, a time whose seemingly unexpected association of humanitarianism and securitization discourses in the response to the “crisis”, provides a unique opportunity to empirically explore their interconnected and mutually constitutive nature (Aradau 2004a).

1.4 The Non-governmental Organizations

Within the variegated landscape of humanitarian organizations responding to the Syrian crisis, I have had to circumscribe the object of analysis. Acknowledging that humanitarianism has undeniably various expressions originating from different historical and cultural backgrounds (Kennedy 2005; Fiori 2013), I also agree with Pacitto and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2013). They have noted how dominant humanitarian theory has been based on a tradition of Western humanitarianism with its specific set of values and practices. Present-day humanitarianism — defined by some authors as a ‘new humanitarianism’— with its special relationship with the political sphere and its assumingly universal language, is even more embedded in Western culture (Chandler 2001). Without denying the relevance of ‘other’ important forms of relief action, my book will focus on the tradition of Western professionalized and transnational humanitarianism.

Among the wide range of different organizations operating in the humanitarian sector, I decided to focus on non-governmental organizations, as opposed to UN agencies and state actors, for two main reasons. First, because although it is a fact that humanitarian assistance is today provided by a multiplicity of actors, NGOs have nowadays become one of the most prominent actors of the humanitarian sphere, performing “the vast majority of the operating work of the international humanitarian system” (Maxwell and Walker 2014, 117). Secondly, and most importantly, a large body of scholarship has explored the relationship between International Organizations (IOs) and securitization (see for example the work of Abrahamsen 2005; Andersson 2012; Chandler 2007; Gabiam 2016; Geiger and Pécoud 2014; Gerstl 2010; Russo and Giusti 2017; Longo 2013; Mason 2014; Musaro 2013, 2017). Analysis of the securitizing role of NGOs has been much less investigated (with the notable excptions of Duffield 2007, 2014; Aradau 2004a; Watson 2011).

The world of transnational humanitarian NGOs is still populated by a numerous and variegated set of agencies. The term NGO encompasses organizations with different geographical membership and activities. There are national organizations that only operate in a specific country and transnational ones that intervene across borders and are composed of a variety of members in different States. This study concentrates on the latter because of their wider geographical presence, outreach and potential to shape the transnational humanitarian discourse. Among all organizations, I decided to focus on the major ones. Cottle and Nolan (2007) describe the Red Cross, Save the Children, Oxfam, World Vision, CARE and Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) as “the world’s major aid agencies” (Cottle and Nolan 2007, 862) and show how these organizations have contributed to shape the discourse of today’s

1.5 Multi-modal Analysis 9 humanitarianism. Similarly, Barnett and Weiss (2008) list MSF, CARE, S, World Vision International, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), and Oxfam as the best-known humanitarian agencies. Among these organizations, I have selected the four NGOs identified by the authors quoted above (i.e. CARE, MSF, Oxfam and Save the Children). Moreover, since the time-space framework of the research is the humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis both in the neighboring countries and in Europe between 2015 and 2016, this study will focus on the organizations that have or had operations in all those areas. This will inevitably exclude World Vision and CRS as they have not participated in the refugees/migrants emergency response in the Mediterranean. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been excluded because, although often referred to as an NGO, it has in fact a hybrid status.?