Doing Digital Migration Studies: Methodological Considerations for an Emerging Research Focus (original) (raw)
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This Special Collection “Forced migration and digital connectivity in(to) Europe” historicizes, contextualizes, empirically grounds, and conceptually reflects on the impact of digital technologies on forced migration. In this introductory essay, we elaborate digital migration as a developing field of research. Taking the exceptional attention for digital mediation within the recent so-called “European refugee crisis” as a starting point, we reflect on the main conceptual, methodological and ethical challenges for this emerging field and how it is taking shape through interdisciplinary dialogues and in interaction with policy and public debate. Our discussion is organized around five central questions: (1) Why Europe? (2) Where are the field and focus of digital migration studies? (3) Where is the human in digital migration? (4) Where is the political in digital migration? and (5) How can we de-center Europe in digital migration studies? Alongside establishing common ground between various communities of scholarship, we plea for non-digital-media-centric-ness and foreground a commitment toward social change, equity and social justice.
DIGITAL ROUTES, »DIGITAL MIGRANTS«: FROM EMPOWERMENT TO CONTROL OVER REFUGEES’ DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS
Družboslovne razprave, 2018
The text studies how digitality and refugee routes intersect by focussing on the concepts of »connected migrants« and the digital footprints of refugee routes in transnational spaces. The smartphone is a key signifier of today’s refugee, and possession of one is questioned by government policies of legitimisation and public opinion perceptions of what constitutes a »genuine refugee«. These overlook the complex question of digital rights and migration’s embeddedness in the fluidity of the postmodern world. The text thus deals with the digital world’s ambivalence, which is not just a one-way relation of empowerment but entails the risk of complete control over a refugee’s body as well. We establish that an important shift has occurred in European policies, one most visible in the process of erasing the electronic traces of refugees on the move and the illegal return of refugees to the previous country on their way, the so-called »pushbacks«.
Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies
Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies, 2021
Social researchers often walk a tightrope. On the one hand, they try to adhere to ethical principles when working with vulnerable groups. On the other, they aim to not cast these groups as inherently lacking agency. Digital practices have only made this dilemma more acute by strengthening the agency of vulnerable groups—in this case, those within the European border regime threatened by deportation—while also putting migrants at increased danger from bordering and surveillance practices. Drawing from a militant research approach, as well as from the Autonomy of Migration (AoM) perspective, this contribution illuminates this dilemma, while also arguing for reflexive and contextualised ethics aimed towards solidarity and social change.
Doing Digital Migration Studies. Theories and Practices of the Everyday.
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
Doing Digital Migration present a comprehensive entry point to the variety of theoretical debates, methodological interventions, political discussions and ethical debates around migrant forms of belonging as articulated through digital practices. Digital technologies impact upon everyday migrant lives, while vice versa migrants play a key role in technological developments – be it when negotiating the communicative affordances of platforms and devices, as consumers of particular commercial services such as sending remittances, as platform gig workers or test cases for new advanced surveillance technologies. With its international scope, this anthology invites scholars to pluralize understandings of ‘the migrant’ and ‘the digital’. The anthology is organized in five different sections: Creative Practices; Digital Diasporas and Placemaking; Affect and Belonging; Visuality and digital media and Datafication, Infrastructuring, and Securitization. These sections are dedicated to emerging key topics and debates in digital migration studies, and sections are each introduced by international experts.
Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies
Digital technologies present new methodological and ethical challenges for migration studies: from ensuring data access in ethically viable ways to privacy protection, ensuring autonomy, and security of research participants. This Introductory chapter argues that the growing field of digital migration research requires new modes of caring for (big) data. Besides from methodological and ethical reflexivity such care work implies the establishing of analytically sustainable and viable environments for the respective data sets—from large-scale data sets (“big data”) to ethnographic materials. Further, it is argued that approaching migrants’ digital data “with care” means pursuing a critical approach to the use of big data in migration research where the data is not an unquestionable proxy for social activity but rather a complex construct of which the underlying social practices (and vulnerabilities) need to be fully understood. Finally, it is presented how the contributions of this bo...
Social Media + Society
For displaced people, migrating into Europe has highly complex information needs about the journey and destination. Each new need presents problems of where to seek information, how to trust or distrust information, and financial and other costs. The outcomes of receiving poor or false information can cause bodily harm or death, loss of family, or financial ruin. We aim to make two major contributions: First, provide rich insights into digital literacy, information needs, and strategies among Syrian and Iraqi refugees who entered Europe in 2015, a topic rarely dealt with in the literature. Second, we seek to change the dominant perspective on migrants and refugees as passive victims of international events and policies by showing their capacities and skills to navigate the complex landscape of information and border regimes en route to Europe. Building on research at Za’atari refugee camp (Jordan), we surveyed 83 Arab refugees in two centers in Berlin. Analyses address refugees’ tem...
Empowering experiences of digitally mediated flows of information for connected migrants on the move
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2022
Together with their precarious access to basic rights, Syrian refugees and other temporary migrants also face information precarity, a condition of information instability and insecurity. Although there is a growing literature parallel to the increase in the number of refugees and other temporary migrants, the extent to which digital communication helps them to cope with this kind of precarity still needs to be discussed. From this standpoint, in this paper, I discuss the role of information and communication technologies in the transnational lives of those migrants in Turkey while they are on the move, through the theoretical framework of connected migrants and how the digital space of flows accommodates affordances to overcome information precarity. Empirical findings reveal that use of information and communication technologies, e.g. smartphones and social media, not only provide migrants with transnational connections but also become a strategic tool for survival, especially for refugees and asylum seekers. Most migrants maintain transnational social bonds, either through phone calls or social media. Diasporic connections through social media and existing social capital in Turkey assist migrants to meet various needs.
Precarious migrants, migration regimes and digital technologies: the empowerment-control nexus
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2020
This special issue makes an in depth analysis of the various and complex interactions between precarious (i.e. forced, vulnerable, undocumented or deported) migrants’ emancipatory practices enabled by information and communication technologies, and the constraints created by technological tools used for surveillance and migration control. It explores the empowerment-control nexus by articulating the use of digital technologies – whether by migrants themselves, by civil society actors, or by institutions – with their mediating role in the processes of empowerment, surveillance and migration control. It gathers together seven articles that draw on original empirical studies conducted across various geographical zones (European Union, Switzerland, France, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Mexico and the United States), and different disciplines (anthropology, sociology, geography, media studies, law, and deportation studies). Building on this diversity, this collection of papers embraces the richness of several theoretical lenses and reflects the varying degrees of (dis)entanglement between individual and institutional practices, at micro and macro scales, as well as local, national and supranational levels.
Migrant Digital Space: Building an Incomplete Map to Navigate Public Online Migration
Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies, 2021
This chapter introduces the concept of migrant digital space (MDS). MDS is defined as configured by migrants’ online activity before the journey, en route, and when settling down, and as a space shaped by practices. Following a relational approach to space, MDS is understood as an outcome of social relations and practices with material and intangible characteristics. Within this perspective, MDS is formed by (a) digital subjects (accounts, pages, hashtags, channels), (b) migrant-related topics (such as discussions on migration routes; language lessons; football conversations; university enrolment; job seeking) through conversations across (c) various digital platforms. After introducing the concept of MDS it is explained how, in the context of the DIGINAUTS project, the concept was developed into the collection of a dataset of public Facebook content, which was subsequently implemented. The data collected and some of its characteristics are highlighted.