Over the past decade, smartphones have become indispensable tools in migrants’ journeys across Europe’s borders. This presentation examines how smartphone use shapes migrants’ experiences of visibility and invisibility along the Balkan Route, focusing on North Macedonia as a key yet understudied transit space. Rather than treating migrants as either passive victims or security threats—a dichotomy that often underpins European border governance— Fatmanur explores how migrants use digital technologies to exercise agency within increasingly restrictive border regimes. The analysis draws on three months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in North Macedonia, including interviews with migrants residing in transit and reception centers, participant observation through volunteer work with a migrant support NGO, and follow-up online interviews with individuals who crossed the Balkan Route at different moments over the last decade. Bringing these experiences into conversation with critical border studies, Fatmanur conceptualises in/visibility not as a fixed condition but as a contested terrain through which power is exercised and negotiated.
The findings show that smartphones function simultaneously as tools of invisibility and visibility. Migrants use digital networks, messaging applications, and social media platforms to identify safer routes, evade surveillance, and navigate uncertainty. At the same time, smartphones enable strategic forms of visibility by allowing migrants to document abuses, mobilise public attention, and challenge the invisibility of border violence. The presentation also traces how information-sharing practices have evolved from closed, trust-based networks to highly visible digital platforms such as TikTok, fundamentally reshaping knowledge production, smuggling economies, and border-crossing strategies. By foregrounding migrants’ own digital practices, this research contributes to debates on borders, migration, and technology, demonstrating how smartphones have become crucial tools through which migrants negotiate mobility, survival, and resistance along the Balkan Route.