Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies

Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies

Author: Marie Sandberg

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-11-23

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 303081226X

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This Open Access book investigates the methodological and ethical dilemmas involved when working with digital technologies and large-scale datasets in relation to ethnographic studies of digital migration practices and trajectories. Digital technologies reshape not only every phase of the migration process itself (by providing new ways to access, to share and preserve relevant information) but also the activities of other actors, from solidarity networks to border control agencies. In doing so, digital technologies create a whole new set of ethical and methodological challenges for migration studies: from data access to data interpretation, privacy protection, and research ethics more generally. Of specific concern are the aspects of digital migration researchers accessing digital platforms used by migrants, who are subject to precarious and insecure life circumstances, lack recognised papers and are in danger of being rejected and deported. Thus, the authors call for new modes of caring for (big) data when researching migrants’ digital practices in the configuration of migration and borders. Besides taking proper care of research participants’ privacy, autonomy, and security, this also spans carefully establishing analytically sustainable environments for the respective data sets. In doing so, the book argues that it is essential to carefully reflect on researchers’ own positioning as being part of the challenge they seek to address.


The Digital Border

The Digital Border

Author: Lilie Chouliaraki

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2022-06-21

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1479850969

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How do digital technologies shape the experiences and meanings of migration? As the numbers of people fleeing war, poverty, and environmental disaster reach unprecedented levels worldwide, states also step up their mechanisms of border control. In this, they rely on digital technologies, big data, artificial intelligence, social media platforms, and institutional journalism to manage not only the flow of people at crossing-points, but also the flow of stories and images of human mobility that circulate among their publics. What is the role of digital technologies is shaping migration today? How do digital infrastructures, platforms, and institutions control the flow of people at the border? And how do they also control the public narratives of migration as a “crisis”? Finally, how do migrants themselves use these same platforms to speak back and make themselves heard in the face of hardship and hostility? Taking their case studies from the biggest migration event of the twenty-first century in the West, the 2015 European migration “crisis” and its aftermath up to 2020, Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou offer a holistic account of the digital border as an expansive assemblage of technological infrastructures (from surveillance cameras to smartphones) and media imaginaries (stories, images, social media posts) to tell the story of migration as it unfolds in Europe’s outer islands as much as its most vibrant cities. This is a story of exclusion, marginalization, and violence, but also of care, conviviality, and solidarity. Through it, the border emerges neither as strictly digital nor as totally controlling. Rather, the authors argue, the digital border is both digital and pre-digital; datafied and embodied; automated and self-reflexive; undercut by competing emotions, desires, and judgments; and traversed by fluid and fragile social relationships—relationships that entail both the despair of inhumanity and the promise of a better future.


Mediating the Refugee Crisis

Mediating the Refugee Crisis

Author: Sara Marino

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-08-30

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 3030535630

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This book looks at how Europe’s refugee crisis has provoked different political and humanitarian responses, all similarly driven by technology. The author first explores the transformation of Europe into an increasingly militarised space, where technologies are mainly used to exercise surveillance and to distinguish between citizens and unwanted migrants. She then shifts the attention to refugees’ practices of connectivity by looking at how technologies are used by refugees to communicate, perform and resist their exile. Finally, the book examines the opportunities and challenges that characterise the impact of digital social innovation in humanitarian settings. By focusing on how technologies are used to promote solidarity in crisis contexts, the volume provides an original contribution to studying the role of tech for good activism within the space of Fortress Europe. Based on interviews with refugees, digital humanitarians and social entrepreneurs, the book timely questions what Europe means today, and why dialogue is now more important than ever.


Navigating the European Migration Regime

Navigating the European Migration Regime

Author: Anna Wyss

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2022-08-29

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1529219620

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EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND. Amid the heavy politicisation and problematisation of male migrants in Europe, this ethnographic study casts new light on their experiences, struggles and everyday resistance. The author follows the journeys of those who seek, but have little hope of achieving, permanent residence status in European countries, tracking their successive migrations, detentions and deportations within and beyond the continent. She explores migrants’ tactics, the impact of precarity on their lives and the dual feelings of enduring hope and powerless vulnerability they experience. This is a sensitive and insightful analysis of how the European migration regime shapes, and is shaped by, migrants’ practices.


Technologies of Refuge and Displacement

Technologies of Refuge and Displacement

Author: Linda Leung

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2018-08-24

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 149850003X

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Technologies of Refuge and Displacement: Rethinking Digital Divides aims to theoretically and practically understand technology access and use from the perspective of those on the “wrong” side of the digital divide. Specifically, it examines refugees as a group that has received scant attention as technology users, despite their urgent need for technological access to sustain tenuous links to family and loved ones during displacement. It draws from over 100 interviews and surveys with refugees conducted from 2007 to 2011, utilizing this empirical data to interrogate well-known theories about technology and its users. In doing so, it seeks to rethink the popular model of “digital divide” and offer alternative ways of conceptualizing technology literacy and access. It examines how principles from design and IT industries can be applied to contexts with constrained availability, access, and affordability to provide technology services that accommodate users with limited technical and language literacies.


Information and Communications Technology in Support of Migration

Information and Communications Technology in Support of Migration

Author: Babak Akhgar

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-05-31

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 3030932664

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The book provides a holistic review, presenting a multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary, international, and evidence-based approach to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in migration. The book brings together different views and multifaceted responses to ICT-based migration management, examining their overlap, conflict, and synergies. The book is a major addition to the field, tackling important debates concerning humanitarianism and securitization in the reception of migrants, as well as exploring the role of digital technology in aiding migrant integration. The authors explore contentious areas such as the use of new technologies deployed on borders for migration management and border security under the umbrella of smart border solutions including drones, AI algorithms, and face recognition, which are widely criticized for ignoring the fundamental human rights of migrants. The research presented will depart from the euphoric appraisals that technology has made things easier for migrants and those who assist them, to critically examine the bane and boon, benefits and afflictions, highlighting the barriers, as well as the solutions, including several under-researched aspects of digital surveillance and the digital divide. This edited volume has been developed by the MIICT project, funded under the EU Horizon 2020 Action and Innovation programme, under grant agreement No 822380. Provides a positive approach to the integration of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions Offers a strategic approach to providing digital services for migrants at an EU, national and local level Bridges the gap between academia and front-line practitioners’ work by providing theoretical, policy, ethical, and methodological recommendations


Digital Identity, Virtual Borders and Social Media

Digital Identity, Virtual Borders and Social Media

Author: Emre E. Korkmaz

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2021-04-30

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1789909155

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This insightful book discusses how states deploy frontier and digital technologies to manage and control migratory movements. Assessing the development of blockchain technologies for digital identities and cash transfer; artificial intelligence for smart borders, resettlement of refugees and assessing asylum applications; social media and mobile phone applications to track and surveil migrants, it critically examines the consequences of new technological developments and evaluates their impact on the rights of migrants and refugees.


The Digital Empowerment-Control Nexus

The Digital Empowerment-Control Nexus

Author: Mihaela Nedelcu

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-04

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1040223168

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This book analyses the diverse and complex interactions between the emancipatory practices of precarious (i.e. forced, vulnerable, undocumented or deported) migrants enabled by information and communication technologies, and the constraints imposed by technological tools used for surveillance and migration control. It explores the digital empowerment-control nexus by articulating the use of digital technologies - whether by migrants themselves, civil society actors or institutions - with their mediating role in the processes of empowerment, surveillance and migration control. Based on original empirical studies, the chapters bring contrasting and complementary insights into the use of digital technologies as agentic and/or surveillance tools in different national and supranational contexts (Turkey, Mexico, the United States, Switzerland, France, Romania, Greece and the European Union) and from different disciplinary perspectives (anthropology, sociology, geography, media studies, law and deportation studies). Using different theoretical lenses, they demonstrate the varying degrees of (dis)entanglement between individual and institutional practices, at micro and macro levels. Helping readers to understand the ambivalent role of digital technologies in (forced) migration processes, The Digital Empowerment-Control Nexus can be used as a resource by students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers interested in digitally mediated migration practices and migration regimes. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.