Abstract
The increase in clandestine migrants to Italy following the 2010 Tunisian uprising has been an issue of popular and political concern in both countries. This article investigates Harga (2021, 2022), a top-rated and critically acclaimed drama series. Produced and aired by Tunisian national television as a vehicle of entertainment-education, Harga strove to make a geopolitical intervention in the process of irregular migration. Combining textual analysis with interviews conducted with the production’s producers and participants, the article explores how local and transnational actors came together to create a counternarrative to the popular success stories of clandestine migrants. This approach contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between media and socio-cultural and political dynamics as well as of their effect on formulating mediated narratives on clandestine migration. Due to Harga’s documentarist depiction of the social and political driving forces behind irregular migration and its open criticism of Tunisian authorities, the show is investigated within the framework of post-uprising Tunisia’s mediascape, and domestic and international political environment. In this regard, it offers a good case study for examining how local politics, transnationalism, and postcolonialism are intertwined in formulating discourses on irregular migration.
Keywords
Introduction
Entertainment-education (EE), “a communication strategy to bring about behavioral and social change” (Singhal and Rogers, 2004: 5), has been an appreciated tool for addressing complex, little-discussed social problems in the developing world in general and the Arab world in particular. In this vein, Arab television drama (musalsal), as a national, regional, and global commodity, has been used by local and transnational elites to disseminate their messages, especially in the holy month of Ramadan since the 1960s.
During Ramadan 2021, Harga, a drama on clandestine migration, became a major hit in Tunisia, a country of both origin and transit of irregular migrants to Europe since the 2011 uprising. Debuting on the national television channel Wataniya 1, the 20-episode series with a record budget of TND 2.6 million (USD 1 million) was produced by Digipro, a private company. It was directed by Lassad Oueslati and written by Imad Eddine Hakim, both known for the critically acclaimed Ramadan drama El Maestro of 2019. For the first time, state television beat private channels in the competition for Ramadan viewership, which generally tends to favor light-hearted comedies (al-Sha’buni, 2021). Uploaded on the WatchNow TV platform and Artify, a Tunisian streaming platform, Harga garnered more than 10 million views, reaching beyond Tunisia’s population of 12 million (Bourougaaoui, 2022). The show was widely discussed in Tunisian online and offline media. Producers and actors were interviewed, placing the issue of clandestine migration in the focus of national discourse. As a show that explored the push factors behind irregular migration, Harga was hailed by critics for challenging “the social and political taboos in a simple language and through unpretentious stories” (Al-Qarafi, 2021). The show discussed, among others, governmental corruption, dysfunctional authorities, economic failure, social oppression, and racism in a stunningly concentrated manner for a series funded and distributed on an Arab national television channel, often defined by (self-)censorship. After the first season’s success, a second season was launched during Ramadan 2022, entitled “The Other Shore,” a follow-up on the protagonists’ (sorry) fate in Italy.
Films on irregular migration need to be interpreted through the attitude of their producers, and their historical and social context (Yaylagül and Korkmaz-Yaylagül, 2007). Harga’s producers have acknowledged in several interviews that one of their purposes was to educate and discourage young Tunisians from making the dangerous sea trip to Europe. This goal overlapped with those of the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), facilitating a partnership for the first season. In a documentarist manner, the show sheds light on the dangers of irregular migration and the harsh realities awaiting migrants on the other shore.
This article positions Harga as a “geopolitical” and “multifaceted” (Jaber and Kraidy, 2020) EE commodity with a message shaped by national and transnational actors. Through this case, we will investigate how EE operates under fragile political conditions and weak state institutions and how postcolonial notions of clandestine migration formulate media texts in a Tunisian context.
Primary and secondary literature on Tunisia’s politics and media are used to contextualize the social and political environment in which Harga was produced. Textual and film analysis is employed to the decode plot, themes and messages of the show. To explore the producers’ experience, seven semi-structured 1 to 2 hour interviews were conducted between December 4–10, 2022, in Tunis with four above-the-line personnel of the show, two decision-makers at Wataniya TV, and one IOM official. The discussions revolved around interviewees’ perceptions of irregular migration, politics and censorship in Tunisia, the effect of local and international politics on production, and the ways national and transnational forces interplayed in articulating Harga’s representation of clandestine migration. 1
Harga in Tunisian discourse
Harga, an Arabic term used in the Maghreb region, translates as “burning,” but is used to refer to clandestine migration. Directly, the term refers to burning documents, including visas and passports. For M’charek (2020), harga is “a story of colonial and postcolonial relations” in the sense that the phenomenon emerged in the early 1990s when, following the ratification of the Schengen agreements, Italy, a main destination of immigrants, imposed entry visas for Tunisians.
Transnational power relations of the postcolonial era are emphatically reflected in the Tunisian government’s approach to harga. In part responding to European demands and in part consolidating President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s (1987–2011) international legitimacy, the immigration law of 2004 toughened penalties for irregular migrants and those assisting them. As soon as Ben Ali signed a deal with his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi to guard its shores in order to curb attempts of irregular crossing, official statistics showed a decrease in interceptions at sea between 2009 and 2010 (Natter, 2022). In Tunisian media, harga and the social and political driving forces behind it were regarded as taboo issues.
With the deterioration of the country’s security apparatus and border controls, the emigration from Tunisian shores skyrocketed in early 2011, and the outflow of young clandestine migrants to Europe grew into a general social and political concern (Garelli and Tazzioli, 2016). As Natter (2022: 2) accentuated, in the context of regime transitions, “Tunisian migration politics have been structured by the complex interplay between the ambiguous demands of a democratic electorate, the stickiness of authoritarian institutions, and the inherently transnational dynamics around migration.” From the people’s point of view, the increase in deaths at sea led to the growing distrust of a powerless state unable to save its youth (Cordova, 2021).
The new political freedoms facilitated an opportunity for institutional and civil society activism on many issues, including migration. Exiled left-wing and Islamist politicians returning from Europe opened space for debate by sharing their personal experiences. In 2011, a State Secretary for Migration and Tunisians Abroad was created, followed by the establishment of the National Migration Observatory in 2014, and the High Council for Tunisians Abroad in 2020. Simultaneously, civil organizations emerged that demanded dignity, freedom, and human rights for both citizens and migrants (Boubakri, 2015).
Between 2011 and 2012, neither public nor private television covered the arrival of Tunisian vessels to Lampedusa or the accidents in the Mediterranean. A turning point came on September 18, 2012, when Wataniya 1 filmed a 44-minute report on a shipwreck that occurred on September 6–7 and left more than 70 people dead. The accident was described as the worst tragedy in the history of Tunisia and directed national attention to the issue of harga. This early report, however, was still cautious, as the reporter prevented the mother of one of the survivors from speaking freely about the push factors behind her son’s harga.
In the ensuing years, public interest impelled private television channels such as Tunisia News Network, Nessma, Zitouna TV, and others to air more critical coverages of harga, featuring also portraits of migrants and their families (Elfekih and Hiddi, 2018). Together with increasing civil activity, this trend was also fueled by political considerations since the owners of private channels were generally hostile to Ennahda, the governing party. After the Islamist party came into power in 2011, opponents began to use the issue of harga to highlight the government’s failures, especially during the political crisis between 2013 and 2014.
Public and political concerns found their way into popular culture, including music (rap, rai), graffiti, and other art forms. Harga has also been discussed by the post-2011 Tunisian film industry in documentaries such as Brûle la mer (2014), Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent? (2015), and Weldek rajel (2016), as well as in fiction feature films such as Corps ́etranger (2016), Benzine (2017), Vent du nord (2017), and The Last of Us (2016).
Producer Lassad Ouslati’s Harga series, however, raised the discussion to a new level by providing a near-documentarist account of the social background of irregular migration and by tracking migrants on the other shore.
Entertaining and educating on migration
Harga’s premiere in the month of Ramadan gave the show a special significance. As Abu-Lughod (2008: 6–7) has noted, Ramadan has been the time for broadcasting many popular television drama series on Arab television, which, every year, becomes a national and cultural frame of reference. The most valuable primetime is when families gather for dinner (iftar) and watch television together.
Following the proliferation of satellite channels in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Arab world witnessed a “regionalization” of media companies that pushed businesses to release productions addressing a transnational Arabic-speaking audience. For drama, this meant that Egyptian shows dominated Arab television in the 1990s, followed by Syrian soap operas in the early 2000s, and dubbed Turkish series in the late 2000s. However, as Khalil (2016) pointed out, the regionalization trend started to break down in the late 2000s, with the re-emergence of the “national” as opposed to the regional, and a re-assertion of the “local,” especially in entertainment programming, because of the simultaneous processes of “business push” and “local audience pull.”
In Tunisia, the advertising market is relatively small and most revenues are spent during Ramadan. Therefore, the holy month is the only time of the year when new television dramas debut, resulting in fierce competition. During the past decade, Ramadan television has been dominated by shows and comedies produced by private channels such as Hannibal TV (est. 2005), Nessma TV (est. 2008), and others established after the 2011 uprising. Until the premiere of Harga Season 1 in 2021, Wataniya 1’s Ramadan programming garnered only a small part of the overall viewing share.
Entertainment-education as defined by Singhal and Rogers (2004) is “the process of purposely designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience members’ knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, shift social norms, and change overt behavior” (p. 5). Ramadan drama has since long been used as an EE tool, mediating cultural or political messages to Arab audiences. Developmental themes have since the 1960s infused series aiming to educate Egyptian citizens (Abu-Lughod, 2008; Boyd, 1999). Since then, Egyptian EE productions have focused on development, health, and the economy, often created with the involvement of the United States (Abdulla 2004).
Arab EE, therefore, often operates on the transnational level both in production and distribution. Analyzing Gharabib Soud, Jaber and Kraidy (2020: 1869–1870) defined the 2017 series on the foreign jihadists of the Islamic State as “a new type of strategic popular communication that exploits affordances of television drama to make a geopolitical and multifaceted intervention.” In this sense, the show can be regarded as “geopolitical,” as it targets a transnational nonstate actor (the Islamic State) and “multifaceted” in the sense that it operates to counter radical narratives and to rhetorically advocate agendas tied to states (Saudi Arabia and the United States). My contention is that a similar argument can be applied to Harga, albeit with some limitations. The show is “geopolitical,” as it targets irregular migration, it is a transnational phenomenon, and it is “multifaceted,” as its goal is to counter popular narratives (partly) based on misinformation. However, Harga’s agendas are not tied to states, but to various forces that shape Tunisian and European notions of clandestine migration.
In terms of its intended audience, Harga cannot be considered a transnational commodity. Although the harga phenomenon is known in the entire Maghreb region, the show was presented exclusively on Tunisian national television and streaming platforms; it was dubbed in Tunisian dialects (as well as in French and Italian), and it referenced national issues, exclusively targeting a Tunisian audience.
Between fiction and documentary
As Jaber and Kraidy (2020: 1873) noted, Arab television drama has been variously considered transgressive, conservative, or in-between, but “melodramatic conventions – such as a focus on human relationships, themes of justice and injustice, and individualized suffering and longing, and distinct emotionality around virtuous victims – are crucial to their impact.” In this regard, Harga tugs at unprecedented emotional chords for a Ramadan drama by blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
Although the series is clearly fictional, it takes inspiration from real-life events, draws on the experiences of the producers during extensive research fieldwork in the city of Zarzis, and benefits from the advice of experts. As such, the show fits the category of “authentic television” communicating a strong sense of social reality by developing complex characters and engaging emotions (Penfold-Mounce et al., 2011).
Unlike in most Arab musalsals, including most Tunisian ones, dialogs are characterized by spontaneity and authenticity and are performed by actors cast mostly from theaters rather than television, some of whom originated from the southern cities of Zarzis, Toujan, Bendi Kendach, and Ben Guerdane, and therefore have authentic accents as well.
For Lassaad Oueslati, the visual esthetic treatment is close to the documentary, indicated by using a shoulder camera that sticks to the characters when filming on the open sea for the scenes on the boats (Blaise, 2021). The documentarist stance is also evident in the choice of a residential neighborhood in the town of Zarzis as a set and by the decision to film in the actual garbage dump of Borj Chekir rather than reconstructing it for a storyline in Season 2 (Haouel, 2022). Hiring extras from relevant neighborhoods and having them wear their everyday clothes also adds to the feeling of authenticity. Even more daringly, rather than casting extras for the relevant scenes, the show incorporated the real-life fathers and mothers of those missing at sea. Lassad Oueslati explained that he came across a video about a demonstration of parents demanding that the government provide them with information on their children and decided to reproduce this scene for the series with the same protagonists, asking them to repeat what they had done in front of cameras wearing the same clothes (Nafti, 2021).
Reasons for leaving “this shore”
For Lang (2014: 170), the golden age of Tunisian cinema (1986–2006) was defined by allegories of the nation that portray the individual’s struggle against domination under a neo-patriarchal, postcolonial state. In this regard, Harga draws more from the Tunisian silver screen than from television series dominated by light-hearted, family-friendly comedies.While representations of real-life struggles are certainly not absent from Arab musalsals in general, what makes Harga genuinely outstanding in the history of Arab television is the representation of the complexities of social and political issues.
“I fled from war. I don’t understand what Tunisian youth are fleeing from,” says an African immigrant to Majeed (Riadh Hamdi), the father of Khaled, a young man who secretly left for Italy, leaving his parents desperate about his fate. “From poverty. Poverty and war are the same,” replies Majeed (S1.E7). Poverty as a main push factor is introduced via an impoverished neighborhood of Zarzis, where Na’ma (Wajiha Jendoubi), the wife of a disabled man, encourages her teenage son Fares (Malek Ben Saad) to leave illegally as a solution for the family’s desperate economic situation, after hearing from other mothers that their sons are supporting their families from abroad. While such a depiction is rare for a Ramadan series, the portrayal of poor neighborhoods per se is nothing new in Tunisian cinema and recalls productions like Mohamed Zran’s Essaïda (1996).
Beyond poverty, Harga negotiates several social and structural problems, which have been issues of concern in post-revolutionary Tunisian media. Through the character of Amina (Sana Al Habib), a young university graduate struggling to find a job, then convinced by her boyfriend to sell her inheritance to cover the costs of harga, the show depicts the struggle of fresh high school and university graduates trying to enter the labor market (Ben, 2018). On the clandestine boat, we also meet Hala (Aïcha Ben Ahmed), a pregnant, unmarried young woman facing rejection both by authorities and society. Lack of economic safety and the social stigmatization of single, unwed mothers was widely discussed after the 2011 uprising and became a matter of public concern in 2020 when an MP of the Ennahda-split al-Karama coalition suggested that single mothers were “prostitutes” or “had been raped,” suggestingthat – what he regarded – women of morals would not have sexual relationship outside marriage (Middle East Eye, 2021). The show also introduces Amina’s sister, Alia (Mariem Ben Hssen), a young woman who was imprisoned for stabbing a harasser. Sexual violence against women has likewise been an issue of public concern since October 2019, when photos of a member of parliament masturbating in his car while watching a girl in front of her high school circulated on social media networks, sparking the hashtag campaign of #EnaZeda (Tunisian Arabic for “me too”).
Along with social issues, Harga provides an account of the systemic dysfunction of Tunisian authorities and political institutions. A bureaucratic jungle inhabited by officials too ignorant, apathetic, or powerless to address the citizens’ problems is depicted through the eyes of Majeed. Desperately searching for his son, he finds corrupt coastal guards and lawyers benefiting from their clients’ desperation. Following the careless suggestion of a bureaucrat at the Foreign Ministry, Majeed takes an illegal boat to Italy hoping to find his son. Unsurprisingly, he faces the same ignorance on the other shore. In the heat of an argument at the Tunisian consulate of Palermo, Majeed confronts the administrator: “You make the people migrate.” “Such problems are far from us” (Heek mashakel ba’eed ’anna), the officer replies. The choice of words indicates the physical distance between both Tunisia and Italy and between public servants and the ordinary people they are supposed to serve. When Majeed asks her what she is supposed to be doing, the officer responds, “I serve my country” and threatens to call security as a symbolic act of representatives hiding behind law enforcement from the ire of the people.
Gloomy, but nevertheless realistic depictions of the homeland are relatively rare in Arab television, defined by the (self-)censorship of producers carefully navigating the complex sociopolitical systems that define production (Sayfo, 2022). To understand Harga’s critical notions, examining the post-revolutionary Tunisian mediascape and domestic politics is necessary.
A liberated media scene
The explicit social and political criticism articulated by Harga is intriguing, as the show was funded and distributed by Wataniya 1, Tunisia’s national television. As in many Arab countries, the Tunisian national television system has been defined by the state-broadcasting model, given that national broadcasting institutions were owned and operated by government institutions, led by centralized state visions (Ayish, 2010). Program producers acted as government employees, guided not by professional standards and practices, but by political agendas.
Hannibal TV, the first private TV channel, was launched in 2005 with a profile in entertainment programming. The introduction of private media led to the on-air discussion of divisive issues that were not as apparent previously. Nevertheless, private channels proved sensitive to what Ben Ali’s government perceived as national and security interests (Bassil and Kassem, 2021).
After the fall of Ben Ali’s regime, satellite channels proliferated, leading to the appearance of 12 television and 20 radio channels. Similarly as in other MENA countries, due to state elites’ stakes in economic and media sectors, patronage networks emerged in private media, facilitating the ruling elite’s consolidation of power (Richter and Gräf, 2015).
The national television elected its own editorial committee and implemented strategies to reprofile the channel into a public service medium. Although state control through the Ministry of Information has declined, new state-related institutions have been set up to maintain media regulation (Farmanfarmaian, 2014; Joffé, 2014). In 2012 a new director and news director were announced for Wataniya 1, while the 2014 constitution’s Articles 31 and 32 guaranteed freedom of opinion, expression, information, and publication.
Wataniya 1 remained the dominant channel of the analog market, covering almost the entire Tunisian territory. In the first 2 years after the uprising, Wataniya 1, the flagship channel of the Tunisian Radio and Television Enterprise (ERTT), broached long-neglected social issues and commanded the largest share of viewership. As Farmanfarmaian (2014) observed, with funding ensured from a small but mandatory tariff of the population’s electricity bills and a large crew, Wataniya 1 was uniquely able to report on events across the country. Therefore, unlike in other Arab countries, public service television in Tunisia became a platform for information, for protesting against the government’s performance, and for political marginalization (Sakr, 2012).
Indeed, party elites infiltrated media institutions and exerted informal influence over various outlets (Miladi, 2021). Still, in the case of Wataniya 1, the fact that the decade after the revolution saw nine governments meant that together with the above-mentioned institutional guarantees, no single political power grew strong enough to gain control over its editorial policies. Therefore, Wataniya 1 maintained its capacity as a platform for discussing social and political issues of public concern. On the other hand, it lost the competition in entertainment programming to private channels, especially during Ramadan.
In personal interviews, Harga’s producers confided that working with Wataniya 1 was smoother than they assumed it would have been with private channels linked to various political factions and economic elites. They insisted that their project proposal and script were immediately accepted and that the channel did not request any alterations. From the producers’ perspective, the editorial climate at Wataniya 1, together with the fact that Lassad Oueslati had established his reputation with El-Maestro (2019), a musical drama involving social and political criticism that was previously aired on Wataniya 1, facilitated a production process free of censorship.
However, the national channel did not prove wholly immune to political turbulence. On July 25, 2021, President Kais Saied sacked the prime minister, suspended parliament, and announced his intention to gain control over the judiciary. Three days later, the president replaced Wataniya 1’s director. Since then, politicians and activists who openly criticized the president have been invited less frequently to Wataniya 1’s talk shows.
While these events did not affect the production of Harga’s first season, which debuted on April 12, 2021, they could have potentially affected the second season debuting a year later. In the following, I argue that both seasons closely respond to the overall political discourse in Tunisia and are largely in line with Kais Saied’s rhetorics.
Anti-elitist climate of post-revolutionary Tunisia
Even though Harga harshly criticizes Tunisian authorities, the closing credits list around 20 ministries, local authorities, and governmental institutions that contributed to the show in one way or another. Producers explained to me that the listed institutions mainly provided shooting permissions, which they received automatically as the producer was Wataniya 1. They also agreed that while general criticism of institutions was not considered problematic, singling out specific politicians and representatives certainly would have been. Solely the Ministry of Foreign affairs objected to “defaming the Ministry in front of domestic and international public opinion” for the above-mentioned scene, in which one of the ministry’s officers advises Majeed to take an irregular trip himself to find his son in Italy (Al Chourouk, 2021). However, there were no consequences.
Authorities’ (lack of) response to Harga’s critical notions need 3 to be set against the background of the post-revolutionary political landscape. On October 23, 2011, in the first Constituent Assembly election after the fall of Ben Ali, Islamist Ennahda emerged as the strongest party in the legislature and formed a troika government with the center-left secular Congress for the Republic (CPR) and social democratic Ettakatol. Failing to address domestic challenges, including rising unemployment, a deteriorating security situation, the influx of over a million Libyan refugees, and a wave of social protests, Ennahda came second in the October 2014 parliamentary election. The consensus-based coalition was formed with the secularist Nidaa Tounes to facilitate the democratic transition. However, large parliamentary coalitions of the ensuing years made up of parties of differing, sometimes downright conflicting views on social and economic issues created a gridlock in the legislature, making parliament unable to address the country’s core problems such as economic stagnation and corruption (Brumberg and Salem, 2020). Between October 2018 and October 2019, economic, social, and political protests erupted in the country. In October 2019, Kais Saied, a political outsider, won the presidential elections following a campaign that tapped into the frustration of the marginalized masses by blaming the established political parties for failure in fighting corruption (Albrecht et al., 2023).
On July 25, 2021, Kais Saied invoked Article 80 of the constitution, which allows a president who determines that the country is facing “imminent danger” to take “any measures necessitated by the exceptional circumstances.” Soon, mass rallies were held across the country supporting the President’s actions (Bassil and Kassem, 2021).
After his election in October 2019, Kais Saied politicized the issue of clandestine migration. In August 2020, the president accused some political parties (subtly insinuating Islamist Ennahda and its associates) of being behind the high rate of irregular migration. In the same vein, Saied described clandestine migration as “a conspiracy against the results of the presidential elections” (al-Shayhiy, 2020).
In this anti-elite populist environment, defined by the weak grip of political forces on institutions, Harga’s critical approach to governmental institutions carried few risks, even more so because the show, although without mentioning his name, included a barely veiled reference to the hope shared by many Tunisians that Kais Saied would drain the swamp. In the montage concluding Season 2’s finale, Na’ma, desperate because of the accusations of terror and injustice faced by her son Fares, informs the authorities that her son has written a letter to the President of the republic to get justice.
Transnational interplays in an Arab EE program
Being a “geopolitical” EE program, the text of Harga was informed not only by domestic, but also by transnational narratives on clandestine migration. Following the rise of the arrivals from Tunisia, Western states and NGOs launched deterrence campaigns to discourage Tunisians and people from other African countries from illegal crossings. In July 2016, the Italian Ministry of Interior and the IOM Coordination Office for the Mediterranean in Rome launched the “AWARE MIGRANTS” Campaign to raise awareness among potential migrants about the dangerous journey across the desert and the Mediterranean, mainly through the production and online distribution of recorded stories and accounts narrated by migrants (IOM, 2016). Adopted under the auspices of the United Nations on December 19, 2018, the Global Compact for Migration was signed with the goal to “promote multi-lingual information campaigns and organize awareness-raising events and pre-departure orientation training in countries of origin” (UN, 2018). European governments also increased information campaigns.
On April 8, 2021, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Tunisia office launched a campaign called Esshih (The Truth) to deter young people from illegally crossing the Mediterranean by disseminating information on the risks in mainstream media, including television and radio broadcasts. The 18-month project was part of ARISE (Awareness Raising and Information for Safety and Empowerment), a one-million-euro campaign funded by the Netherlands and the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund managed by the DG Home Affairs & Migration of the European Commission (IOM, 2019). It was promoted by the Tunisian National Observatory on Migration (ONM), IOM, and the Tunisian diaspora association in Pontes, Italy (ANSA, 2021).
At a press conference, IOM also declared its partnership with Wataniya 1 to organize a series of initiatives around the Harga series. The opening and closing credits of Season 1 also mention IOM and Esshih. Otherwise, IOM’s contribution to the project was barely registered by the public, leaving space for speculation and accusations leveled against the producers of serving the European Union’s interests by discouraging Tunisians from migration. In response, the producers and IOM both insisted that IOM was not involved in the production; however, after several meetings, the parties found that the producers’ views on migration and social issues “were more or less in line” with the Esshih campaign (Gasteli, 2021).
According to interviews I conducted with the producers and IOM personnel, when IOM was informed about Harga, the project was already well into the postproduction phase, leaving IOM little space to influence the content. Still, IOM purchased space for their logo in the titles for a “non-commercial price” within the framework of a broader cooperation between the UN and Tunisian television that was signed after the uprising of 2011. IOM also signed a deal with Wataniya 1 to prepare a 90-minute feature film from the video material recorded for Seasons 1 and 2 that was screened by IOM’s associates at various offline campaigns around the country. The show’s actors also attended the events, discussing the issue of harga with local youth. As a funder, IOM certainly had a say in what to include and exclude; therefore, unlike the series, the feature film does not contain scenes casting Italy and Italian authorities in a bad light.
Producers asked IOM to fund subtitling the series in other languages, facilitating an international distribution. However, Wataniya 1, as the funder and hence rights owner of the series, showed little interest in global distribution due to “bureaucratic practices,” as one of the producers put it to me.
As the Esshih campaign ended and there was no dedicated budget to continue cooperation, IOM did not participate in the production of Season 2, which, together with the increasingly critical tone toward Italian policies and authorities in Season 2, silenced those accusing the show of serving European interests. Still, the fact that the season in which IOM did not participate was more outspoken strengthened the perception that Season 1 was influenced by European interests.
During the meetings with the producers, IOM representatives also shared their views on the issue of Sub-Saharan African migrants and their experiences in Tunisia on their way to Europe. Some of these ideas were incorporated into the plot of Season 2 through the character of Kayla (Oumaima Bahri). In Season 1, we meet Kayla in Italy, experiencing anti-black racism on a daily basis. After being deported to her homeland (which is not specified), we meet Kayla again in Season 2, as she is making her way through the desert and then tries to make ends meet before saving enough money to continue to Italy. Together with other Sub-Saharan women, she faces widespread racism, suffering from the mistreatment of authorities, ineligibility for healthcare, and fighting off abusive Tunisian men.
In an interview, writer Imad Eddine Hakim described racism in Italy to be very rampant, noting that “racism that is practiced against Africans in Tunisia is the same as the racism that is practiced against us in Italy” (Eid, 2021). The issue of African immigrants in Tunisia was widely politicized after the 2011 revolution. Organizations such as LTDH and FTDES, as well as European CSOs such as Cimade and Migreurop launched awareness campaigns in Tunisia. In June 2016, three CSOs submitted a draft law against racial discrimination in parliament. On October 9, 2018, Tunisia became the second African country after South Africa to pass a law criminalizing racial discrimination (Parikh, 2021). Viewed against this background, the issue of racism, like most social concerns discussed in Harga, can hardly be regarded as taboo-breaking, but more as an amplifier.
Stay away from the “other shore”
Images of post-harga European life in Tunisian public discourse have mainly been molded by the testimonies of immigrants, very often sharing success stories in oral and, more recently, in online accounts. In artistic productions, portrayals are Janus-faced, with Europe appearing both as a fortress, a land not easily reached, where everything is possible, but also as a land of disillusion, loneliness, and racism (Souiah et al., 2018). Rivera-Escartin and Johansson-Nogués (2022) regard pride, betrayal, and fear as the key emotions in film productions on harga. Investigating the most significant films produced after 2011, they found that “Europe becomes a foil for the home country. Europe is hailed by the harraga as a ‘land of hope and freedom’ in sharp contrast to the current situation in Tunisia.” However, Europe is not only a land of promise, as it “also stands for the emotions of disillusion and fear, whether in the form of acute poverty, racism, loneliness, shame over deportation or even death, in the harraga’s encounter with European borders, society and/or authorities” (p. 5).
The Harga series intentionally confronts positive notions by presenting also the darkest sides of the immigrant experience. After their arrival in Italy, the protagonists are caught and crammed into a prison-like center (Centro), where they face injustice, racism, humiliation, abuse, and rape.
The ill-treatment of migrants in Italian centers has been an issue of concern in post-2011 Tunisian media, both online and offline (Tazzioli, 2018); the series depicts such places as lawless spaces, showing how the infants of migrant women are trafficked by their caretakers, convincing mothers that their children will have a better life if an Italian family adopts them. Some scenes also indicate that while the Italian state receives huge funds for helping immigrants, it provides them with spoiled food and treats them with contempt. In the finale of Season 1, the inhabitants of the Centro break out and try to flee the police. As they are running toward the sea, a boatload of new immigrants arrives, and with close cuts on their faces, we see disillusionment contrasting with the cheerfulness of the new arrivals. In Season 2, the European dream turns into a nightmare, with storylines showing women treated like slaves by farm owners and criminals involved in trafficking migrant’s organs. We witness Majeed facing racism on the streets of Palermo as he is searching for his son. Fares is recruited by Tunisian criminals to sell drugs and is then falsely accused of terrorism after being set up by Italian criminals to bring a bag of explosives to a restaurant. Majeed’s son Khaled (Mabrouk Mahdhaoui) travels to Europe in the hope of finding a job, but is recruited by a terrorist organization. With these storylines, producers also respond to the “link made by European politicians, and unfortunately Tunisian politicians, between illegal immigration and terrorism” (Middle East Eye, 2021).
Season 2 offers insight into the lives of Tunisians who settled down in Italy. Sure enough, not one single success story is presented. We meet Tijani (Aymen Mabrouk), a cultural mediator of Tunisian origin working at the Centro, revealing his inferiority complex to Italians by racism toward his people, Saber (Hedy Krissane), a charming criminal struggling to find peace of mind, Wa’d (Yasmine Bouabid), a young woman working in a restaurant, struggling with drug problems and the loss of her brother, and Rahma (Mariam Al Ferjani), a kind-hearted prostitute. The Italian experience is ultimately reflected in the character of Al-Amin (Ahmed Hafiane). An elderly man, Al-Amin arrived when the borders were still open to Tunisians. Failing professionally and in private life, he lives alone in a poor apartment, rummaging through the trashcans every day. As an ultimate failure, he is humiliated by his son, who offers him money to leave him alone. Al-Amin is not accepted as Italian, not even by his Italian ex-wife. In an argument, when he asserts that he is an Italian citizen, she responds, “You know what the truth is, you are a dirty Arab.” Fed up with humiliation, Al-Amin leaves for Tunisia, where he makes it his mission to convince his nephew to give up his dreams on harga. “It is not where you live that matters. The important is where you find your peace,” he tells Rabee’ (Kosai Allegui), the disabled young man, when he shows Al-Amin his artwork, graffiti on harga (the show’s reflection on the spread of artistic works with this theme). “Even outside, it is not easy. Don’t believe the stories they tell you,” Al-Amin continues. The same message is repeated by many characters, including Sarukh, who also states that “Europe is not like you see on TV!” (S2 E8)
In light of all the hardships in Italy, it comes as a melancholic relief that in the final montage of the last episode, we see all the sympathetic characters, Ameena, Fares, Eyad, Majeed (united with his son) waiting for their flight to Tunisia. The unspoken, educational message of the show is now crystal-clear: Do not travel to Europe illegally.
A postcolonial lesson
The main messages of Harga are embodied by the character of Saroukh (Mhadheb Rmili), a human trafficker with a strong sense of morality and responsibility toward his fellow Tunisians. According to Lassad Oueslati, the character was inspired by a real-life human trafficker he met in a café in the town of Vittoria, Sicily, who explained how he regarded his “profession” as a way of “making up for the shortcomings of a (Tunisian) state that had shattered legitimate aspirations for a better life.” (Al-Talili, 2021) More explicitly, in an interview, Imad al-Din al-Hakim declared that Sarukh’s character was used to mediate messages to the Tunisian state (Diwan, 2022).
Not surprisingly, from the first season on, Saroukh is portrayed as a man of high morals, with profound comments and remarks. In an emotional speech (S1 E20), he addresses the migrants at the center, as he counts off the reasons making them leave the country: oppression (qahra), unemployment (batala), worry (hamm), theft (serqa), bribery (rashwa), and corruption (fasad). However, Saroukh also adds a moralistic perspective on harga on the transnational level. One case in point is a scene where Tijane, the insolent Tunisian intermediator confronts the smuggler, saying, “You came from your countries, we collected you, (. . .) many went out and now live as good citizens of this country. You have a chance to live in a country that respects the law and the citizens. Do you think that Italy should learn from you? Viva l’Italia!”, to which Sarukh angrily responds, “Viva la Tunisie, and Libya and Zaire and Mauritania and Cote d’Ivoire and all of Africa, whose blood you have sucked.” In this sense, the blame for the problems of the Global South is put squarely on the North.
Sarukh’s (or the producers’) understanding of North-South relations in general, and of Italian-Tunisian relations in particular, is condensed into an emotional court scene in the final episode of Season 2, when the smuggler, otherwise fluent in Italian, declares that he will speak in “Tunisian,” so this time the Italians “will have to understand my language.” By juxtaposing “us” (nahna) and “you” (antom), he looks at the relations between the two shores, recalling the times when “you” needed cheap labor and therefore welcomed “us” without visas. While accusing the Italians of abusing Tunisians, he also blames his people: “we cheapened our souls to build your country out of the wealth you stole from us, and when you got what you wanted, you shut the gates.” He cynically points out that doctors, engineers, and scientists are still welcomed, while the rest are rejected.
The scene, aired in April 2022, is not only steeped in postcolonial intellectual, political, and public discourse (Woltering, 2011) widely known to Tunisians, but is also in line with Kais Saied’s earlier statements. On August 2, 2020, when visiting the port of Sfax and Mahdia, two main starting points of harga to Italy, the president declared that “Organizers of illegal maritime crossings, human traffickers, commit crimes that the State can’t tolerate,” while also pointing out the “collective” responsibility of both sides of the Mediterranean, connecting illegal migration, among other reasons, to “the unequal distribution of wealth in the world.” The president suggested that “Instead of investing more in coastal forces to eradicate this scourge, we must eliminate the original reasons that push these candidates to throw themselves into the sea.” Addressing the Tunisian side, he pointed out that the country has failed to solve the economic problems, and that the projects designed to address the issue are hampered by “political and administrative blockages” (Haddad, 2020). In this regard, the critical discourse of Harga’s producers and Saroukh is nothing new for the Tunisian audience.
Conclusion
Televised narratives and EE programs on irregular migration in an Arab and Tunisian postcolonial context are shaped by local and transnational political dynamics, along with actual and previously-established discourses. Political and media systems’ complexities and actual dynamics largely affect the mediated notions of clandestine migration.
Ramadan television drama emerged not only as an entertaining commodity but also as a platform for negotiating issues of social and political concern in the Arab world and is used to inspire behavioral and social change. In line with Jaber and Kraidy’s observation, this article showed that as EE commodities, musalsals are employed to make local, as well as geopolitical interventions, in this case, to discourage Tunisians from crossing the sea to Europe. By showing the trip’s dangers and presenting the darkest sides of the immigrant experience on the “other shore,” the producers counter popular narratives and make a clear statement against clandestine migration. While doing so, they share an interest with Western-funded institutions dedicated to countering irregular migration. However, despite the successful cooperation on Harga, Tunisian articulations of their relationship to the Global North differ from their European counterparts, which limited the creation of a cohesive, consensual media text.
Operating under fragile political conditions defined by weak institutions and a liberated media scene (Farmanfarmaian, 2014) enabled the producers of Harga to articulate the push factors of clandestine migration relatively freely. Still, they were cautious. Therefore, Harga draws from narratives and tropes already discussed in national media, hence (tacitly) approved by decision-makers and widely familiar to the public. Discussing these issues while blaming the authorities and the government, yetwithout singling out specific individuals, can hardly be regarded as a risky enterprise due to the liberalized mediascape of post-2011 Tunisia and the fragility of the ruling governments, with a loose grip on the state media.
Resonating with the population’s anti-elite mood and blending the president’s narratives with a popular, almost populist postcolonialist discourse makes the show a good fit in the cultural and political milieu of its time. Through the heroes’ journey from Tunisia to Italy, the producers ultimately show how various institutions on both sides of the Mediterranean work together to limit opportunities for Tunisia’s and Africa’s poor, linking the two shores and sealing them in one destiny.
