Mediating Mobility - Visual Anthropology in the Age of Migration

Published in 2016 by Columbia University Press, Mediating Mobility emerged from Steffen Köhn’s ethnographic research into the intersection of digital media and the lived experiences of migrants. The work was developed within the broader context of visual anthropology, a field seeking to understand how contemporary displacement and global movement are represented, mediated, and reconstructed through digital tools and personal archiving practices.

The book explores the visual cultures that arise when migrants utilize smartphones and social media to bridge the gap between their places of origin and their new environments. Köhn’s design and methodological approach focus on the tension between the physical reality of borders and the virtual mobility provided by technology, offering a critical look at how images serve as both tools of communication and objects of identity formation for those in transit.