hi everyone welcome to this event from the school of media at london college of communication which is part of university of the arts london i'm rebecca bramel i'm a reader in cultural politics at the at the college and i'm the moderate moderator for this evening today we're celebrating the publication of a new book by my colleague dr sarah moreno and her book is titled mediating the refugee crisis digital solidarity humanitarian technologies and border regimes and it was published by paul grave macmillan this autumn this evening sarah is going to introduce her book and then she's going to discuss some of its key themes with our three guest speakers uh myriad georgie amanda alan carr and les and the last half hour will be given over to your questions so whenever you think of a question you want to raise please do type it into the q a box and the speakers will address those questions later so i'm going to briefly introduce um today's speakers sarah mourinho as i've said is senior lecturer in communications and media at london college of communication and her research focuses on the relationship between digital technologies and transnational spaces migrant identities and communities miria giorgio is professor of media and communications at the london school of economics and political science and her research focuses on urban technologies and the politics of connection and the ways in which migration and diaspora are constituted in the context of mediation she's currently working on a book with lilly chuliraki titled the digital border which examines technologies of power in the context of europe's migration crisis amanda allen carp is an associate professor in the department of media and communication of erasmus university rotterdam she specializes in media migration and intercultural communication her research and her work focuses on how communication technologies are shaping mobility and socio-cultural integration processes of refugees in diverse contexts and finally lears is assistant professor in gender and post-colonial studies at the graduate gender program in the department of media and culture studies at utrecht university and kuhn is the chair of the european communication research and education section on diaspora migration and the media and is currently fellow at the netherlands institute of advanced studies working on a monograph titled digital migration so we welcome them all and first of all we're going to go over to sarah who's going to introduce us to the themes of her new book um thank you thank you rebecca and thank you to london college of communication for hosting this event um and for looking after the logistics of it and thank you to my colleagues miria and amanda for taking the time to read my book and providing such supportive and encouraging reviews i'm beyond grateful for that so thank you so i would like to start my presentation by um introducing um a couple of quotes um from um i don't know if you can see i hope you do um a couple of quotes from one of the syrian refugees i've interviewed um for my book and i really hope that you can see um that you can see that um i've lost um my screams i'm not sure i'm not sure you can um okay perfect so um so yes we would like to start my presentation by introducing um a couple of quotes from one of the um syrian refugees i've interviewed for my book and the court reads um my mobile is my homeland my identity and it was one of the first things that ahmad told me when i interviewed him for a journal article initially and as a migrant myself i immediately understood the effective the emotional um and the material nature of this statement but as a privileged migrant i couldn't fully grasp what he said afterwards the technology somehow was a lifeline for the majority of them and the people were ready to give up their cars and everything but not their mobile phones so i was determined to know more and i began writing this book in 2017 um when the number of people forcibly displaced as a result of the syrian civil war continued to represent one of the most pressing political issues in the public discourse in and beyond europe labored as a crisis as a problem and as an emergency that was never seen before demanding mainly military interventions um able to control to monitor and to stop the movement of unwanted people the so-called refugee crisis also immediately uh presented itself as a heavily techno-mediated event from news uh pictures of refugees are charging their phones in refugee camps or taking selfies to document their safe arrival in europe the relationship between human mobility um forced migration and digital uh and digital connectivity became objects of heated debates in academia and upside academia and this has included of course the debate on um the evolution of europe's migration regime which many have uh argued has also been as also witness a massive intervention of technologies for the purposes of migration management and for border control from drones uh monitoring seas and lands um to artificial intelligence driven systems of registration and authentication um to from biometrics to digitize the forms of surveillance and in a much more simplified way um we can summarize the complexity of this debate by using three very popular buzzwords uh digital border uh the connected or digital refugee and digital humanitarian which are also the protagonist of my book and to me the convergence of these three trajectories um was really something that deserved more research and a research that would recognize technologies as an entry point rather than a product a research that had to be interdisciplinary and had to combine history philosophy migration studies and media studies in order to fully grasp the complexity of the debate and also research that would consider the voices of of of those people who are often marginalized or plainly ignored so the book wanted to do that by bringing in the experience and sentiments of migrants and humanitarians which i think again for the time they gave me so i would like to start from the uh digital humanitarian because i think that this part represents the most original contribution of my book and i start again with a quote where humans can go data can go and this was said to me by the founder of an application for financial transactions in refugee communities and i think that reflects extremely well the degree of optimism uh with which technologies have been embraced by the humanitarian sector and by private actors and by volunteers so as we know the humanitarian world has witnessed a massive shift in the way operations are conducted and in the way that aid is delivered and also in the way private actors such as tech corporations google and microsoft for example have embraced the more humanitarian spirit uh by investing money for um connectivity projects and i do talk about that in my book but i'm also i was also more interested in the contribution of different actors uh the actors that i call as being as you are part of the tech for social good community uh private entrepreneurs social entrepreneurs digital humanitarians uh techies software developers volunteers and the civic tech community in more general who decided um to do something um to help refugees and since 2015 we witnessed an explosion of hackathons digital events mobile applications for refugees we had more than a thousand applications for for refugees and the digital projects more generally and they were meant to help force migrants by providing material and affecting support skills tools and a way to become more empowered because connected so the idea was that behind this explosion of tech for social good initiatives the idea was that uh refugees with a smartphone refugees with digital skills were also refugees that were not only connected but also self-reliant so i was fascinated by this techno hype at the surrounding these technologies in the civic sector um and but i was also curious to understand the real impact of all of this um and i thought the only way to do that was to interview and those who were part of the tech for social good communities but also refugees to understand whether they thought what they thought about these technologies where they were really useful and whether they were using them um so three bigger questions really informed my research and really the interest behind behind this project behind this book so how does the tech for social good community perceives the contribution of technologies what is the relationship between the humanitarian sector the tech industry and governments and finally which is the most charged question i think can take for good activism challenged the techno militarized infrastructure of fortress europe from below so between 2017 and and 2019 i've interviewed several organizations such as crisis classroom called your future refued ref aid tech refugees and empower hack among many others in an attempt to shed light on the different ways in which solidarity can be activated outside the more mainstream and more established networks of humanitarian organizations and i can't go into the details of course during this presentation but um the book presents a list of opportunities and advantages that uh technologies solidarity um bring in in this particular context and you can see some some quotes um here and examined a lot of opportunities um from uh from the ability to crowdsource uh creativity to collaborate beyond and across borders the idea that tech is future pacing is scalable and it is by nature innovative so it is an enabler to achieve something so i was very uh impressed by the um by the enthusiasm and the awareness that my respondents from the tech for social good community had in relation to the contribution attack could make um in the refugee context and the idea that tech was part of a broader picture and the broader ecosystem that could help to achieve longer longer goals and the geotech technologies might not be the solution but just one among many um so so that was incredibly positive and incredibly empowering but the more i was talking to um the tech for social good communities and refugees of course the more i realized that um several challenges hindered the long-term opportunities that tech could bring in terms of circulating solidarity and examine some of them uh in the book um including the um including the defeat the the problem of running solutions or designing projects uh in europe without having people on the ground which um all my respondents realize it was a problem and addressed that already um but also uh the difficulty of building trust uh which was very important the problem of inclusivity and and how now um tech could bring human the human element to the center also by involving refugees in the design planning and delivery of digital solutions and of course also the more logistical issues with tech including the duplication of efforts and the problem of sustainability and also uh more importantly the application of the business model of the tech industry and the i.t industry to a sensitive context like the refugee crisis for example lady of impact or the idea of disrupting something um that which is a concept particularly problematic when it comes to um to a context of crisis or context the demand a particular um caution and attention and of course uh the risk involved in collecting and storing data so in terms the the people have interviewed were all aware of such problems but some issues remained um and and so i tried to open up um in the book these questions about what i call reactive creative activism so i theorize the the tech for social good community as an example of reactive activism because they they their idea and their enthusiasm was driven by um by the desire to do um to do something to address the inefficiency of european institution and it was a very corrective activism because of the opportunities offered by technologies but also um but also the question remained how can we reconcile the politics of solidarity and the ethics of uh data collection so i devised this framework that i called mindful filtering as a way to invite and encourage the type for social community as well as humanitarians more generally and politicians about about the use of data and whether or not this is really necessary so the notion of mindful filtering is quite um a gamble and a risk in some ways because it it's quite um a problematic concept to break down in this particular context but with mindful filtering i wanted to bring to bring in two important uh conditions the element of mindfulness and the element of filtering so as mindfulness um predicts um the the necessity of being in the here and now and to have a holistic understanding of what is going on around us i thought that as a framework um it reflects incredibly well the need for organizations and actors public and private to understand and to have a moralistic understanding of what data collection and data filtering imply and whether or not is data collection always necessary um but also the awareness that um the other is a human being of course so which is often um ignored when it comes to the application of data and in fact during my interviews with the tech for social good communities the idea of refugees as customers was incredibly problematic and and was also um identified by refugees themselves as a very problematic element of of uh tech for social good um so the identification of refugees as customers which is something that i think the notion of mindfulness might help to district uh and to break down the valorization of identities that cannot be reduced to to binary logic the idea that the other is not just um a piece of data but it of course much more complex uh complex than that um and and of course um the mindfulness invites people to invest on creating spaces of self-reflection and i think that is also an important element to consider when it comes to technologies in general especially when it comes to technologies applied to context like like this one and the idea that um again the question that um collecting data is not always in the best interest of the other person and and and the recognition that the refusal to be constant should not hinder the possibility of movement which is a very um important problem when it comes to technology use especially in context of surveillance when not giving refusing to be to give consent denies access to certain services also the humanitarian sector so so the notion um the notion of mindful filtering i think um allows us to reconcile uh what it means to circulate solidarity across and beyond borders by taking into account the interesting challenges and tensions of data collection so so the question was can tech for good solidarity can technologies can the tech for social good community create a space where the more political infrastructures of fortress europe can be tore down and in order to understand that um i needed and i think we had to consider bottom-up practices of digital mediations as well as top-down practices of mediation and i do that in the first half of the book what i talk about digital border and as i compare the more political acts of digital surveillance with refugees practices of digital connectivity and borders are quite sensitive areas um of debate there are everywhere they are often invisible but they are also very visible and they're also incredibly material so which is why in my book i approach the notion of borders of water from many different angles first of all from an historical point of view why were borders created in the first place and also a philosophical point of view and philosophy and especially philosophy of power really helped to break down the complexity of borders as institutions of sovereign power as mechanism of identity formation both in terms of negation of identity and valorization of identity which i hope i'll be able to explain more during the q a um and also from a more media point of view looking at borders as performative spaces as a social political constructions and as performative spaces and of course i also in that path which is the first part of my book i also examine some of the most recent uh interventions uh and technological interventions that the european commission has uh has actively supported um in attempt again to give a more holistic understanding of the bordering practices in the past as well as today and as you can see here more recently in 2018 the commission the european commission has decided to increase the security fund uh to improve its migration policy and more generally to create a safer as they say in more resilient europe a europe that protects um and that includes the large amount of funding mobilized to address the refugee crisis and the humanitarian crisis as they call it both inside and outside europe and these represent an incredibly gray area especially for the bodies of of refugees and marginalized communities were transformed into pieces of data that machine can more easily read authenticate uh stop and monitor and and the transformation of refugees into testing grounds for technological uh experimentations um to process and to sort out um refugees so so to that so as i examine uh as i provided historical philosophical and media sources of the evolution of borders um up until today i also ask um whether or not there is a way out of the digital border and whether or not we can think about a more positive and more productive understanding of fortress europe by using again technologies as an entry point or techn techno mediation as an entry point so so i do ask can technologies offer refugees a platform where power can be contested where fortress europe can be contested and where dialogue can be imagined and can connectivity offer a pathway for more inclusive forms of digital citizenship for the acquisition of visibility and voice um and the connected refuge or the digital refugee has been at the center of um of several studies um that's also the the other guest speakers are have been involved with um they often approach them however um from an outsider perspective um and trying to understand what the digital means to them and and i think that's incredibly important but it was important to of course ask them how they use technologies what they think about technologies what they think the opportunities and challenges are and this is what i did um i did in my book by interviewing um syrian refugees living in london um and the result of my interviews um is um the identification of connectivity as a central um to to mobility as the initial report um really well explains and um crucial for preparing the journey for navigation purposes for connecting and so on and the complexity of these technology uses demanded again a more closer unders a closer understanding of the different ways in which technologies are used which is why in my book i distinguish between technologies in exile and technologies of exile and by thinking about technologies in exile i look at how through the interviews how technologies are used for departure to organize the journey during the journey to europe and um upon arrival um and and the result is an incredibly rich and validated um debate and discussion on the um on the um crucial role the technologies have um but also and and and interestingly um my research discovered more complex uses of technologies um as forms of mediated witnessing which is why i also talk about technologies of exile as this quote um says documented when it would not be impossible without technology so um so so that was i think what allow me to reflect more critically on whether or not technologies can um can can can become a platform for refugees to acquire a sense of agency and acquire a voice and the result i think it's incredibly problematic also because of course um my my respondents didn't have the same understanding or view of technologies but from from the research i've done it looks like this is extremely problematic because a number of opportunities are offered as we know in terms of connectivity in terms of ownership and in terms of agency having a smartphone and being connected really allows forced migrants to um to um to finalize and and to and to make the chisians but limitations occur in the sheet from private uses of technologies during the journey for example to the public space when it comes to finding out if this agency and this voice is also recognized in more mainstream spaces where citizenship is negotiated then the problems arise there is an accountability deficiency that precludes dialogue and an accountability problem on the side of institutions there is no clear policy framework where these the initiatives by the text for social good community and the practices of digital connectivity are recognized and problematically um what precludes dialogue and what precludes uh perhaps a citizenship is the difficulty of going beyond the good citizen ideal so finding and and cultivating the spaces of representation and spaces of visibility where refugees or forced migrants don't have to conform to the ideal of the good citizen or the deal of the connected refugee or the ideal of the vulnerable individual so to be able to break down these pre-packed forms of representation is particularly problematic when it comes to really looking at the transformative potential of technologies in this context so acquiring a voice outside these spaces of representation is incredibly incredibly uh difficult and has a long way to go so so i won't spoil of course the conclusion um that i come to by integrating the board the digital border the digital refugee and digital um humanitarian um but what i will conclude by saying perhaps stating the obvious is that the combination of bottom-up forms of resistance and solidarity either in the forms of fact for social good opportunities or digital connectivity um every practices of connectivity can potentially tear down the wars of fortress europe but the challenges are quite important and there are processes still processes of physical and symbolic bordering which miria also talks about the prevent refugees in the first place but also volunteers from creating a stronger response a counter response to the digital border um but i want to keep um a kind of a positive outlook at the same time so it is in its darkest moments that humanity always finds the courage to create more welcoming pathways and circuits of solidarity groups for communities and for individuals so i hope that the book um gives some space uh to to this hope so thank you very much for your attention um and i will also post uh in the chat and link to uh to about your code forward for the book that's my email address and twitter if you want to get in touch thank you thank you very much sarah um wonderful talk and we're going to move now to the part of the event where we hear from our guest speakers and sarah has prepared three talking points which we're going to address and um so sarah's going to briefly introduce that theme a particular strand of her research and then our uh guest speakers will resp respond briefly um uh drawing on their own work so sarah would you like to speak about the first question yeah thank you rebecca so the the first question has to do with the first part of my book and we know that many states and organizations are involved in migration management have experimented with technologies to reinforce borders from biometrics as i said to artificial intelligence systems to this scenario i tried to propose an alternative and slightly more optimistic perspective that also sees technologies as instruments of resistance and where more inclusive forms of representation can be managed so my question is as a media migration scholar yourselves how do you contextualize the impact of digital connectivity in the context of fortress europe so we're going to go to miriam miria georgie for the first thank you uh first of all thank you sarah thank you to the organizers for including me in this event and thank you sarah for uh this uh challenging question that i will try to address and allow me to uh address this first question um in some length taking a few minutes uh to um to answer your question question because i think that question about the relationship between migration and digitization is reminding us that we need to understand uh any answer in its complexity and i will try to do that with a a reference to what i have learned or what i'm trying to learn through my own research by making three key points so the first point that i want to make is that there's no doubt and i think you make very eloquently as well in your book this point that we need to understand now the project of fortress europe and the project of the border as it took no discursive assemblage of power more generally through digital connectivity and if i could simplify what this means it would be the need to identify the role of digitization in displacing the visibility of the borders violence and in practice this means a number of things so in the context of europe's outer border for example i think it's very important to understand how this violence is expressed first in the very ordinary management the everyday ordinary management of deserving or undeserving travelers via the use of biometrics personal data and ai but also now how we see this violence expressing the extraordinary but intensifying militarized operations that use tracking technologies to push back migrants before they can even voice their claims to european territories and rights and perhaps more worryingly we need to be aware of the borders invisible to citizens violence which is located inside europe's territories and this is a violence that is reproduced through technologies of perpetual uh perpetual surveillance of migrant lives as these take place in on their social media but also in work environment and even in education and in these ways i think it is important even if we want to keep hope and i will come to that in a minute i think it is important to understand how digital connectivity does not only become fundamental to the governance of the border but also to the displacement of its visibility the displacement of a visibility that hides its material and symbolic violence especially away from public systems of knowledge and from public debates the second point i want to make in response to that big question provocatively contradicts the first one where i claimed that we need to understand the border through digital connectivity in fact i think this is uh what i will be talking about in a minute is precisely a contradiction that those of us who are interested in the relationship between digitization and migration need to constantly keep in mind so uh and we need to do that and reflect upon a contradiction because otherwise we end up uh enjoying that comfort of techno determinism that puts puts digitization in the center of all our understanding around migration so my second point is one against technology any analysis of digitization and migration i think and i always need to emphasize that needs to be grounded in the histories and politics of migration and its governance let us remind ourselves of course that historically the border has not been generated through technologies of connectivity but in fact through long-standing and diverse technologies of nationalism eurocentrism and colonialism so like sarah so eloquently does in her book i try to always remember that research and migration is more than research in technology and i think there's uh often a seduction in focusing on technology that we forget that actually research on migration and technology carries enormous responsibility for understanding the deep inequalities revealed and often often hidden also behind the border as a regime of racialized and biopolitical power and the third and last quick point that i want to make in response to that question is that um we of course need to remember that even though the border is becoming a powerful system of racialized uh biopolitical power we should not forget forces of resistance to the border so digitization is not per se a system of control as we know and in fact those of us who go out in the field who are forced to move away from the neat narratives of the techno determinism especially when we can observe migrants uh very diverse uses of technology or when we can observe the everyday or organized solidarities not least as we see them in cities that become refuge or in transnational networks of migration that become systems of mutual support thus to that complex story of digitization and migration let's not forget hope and resistance as i think sarah also you remind us in your book thank you amanda now thank you thank you sarah thank you miria for your wonderful uh interventions i would like to pick up miria on your point on contradictions also when we talk about paradoxes right um i've my in my brief intervention i would like to highlight the paradoxes of increased digital surveillance in a phase of limited or almost absence of knowledge about the multiplicity of refugees experiences and lives uh you know on border spaces so the more um i mean the more surveillance technologies of surveillance are being developed it seems like the last we know about what's going on uh about the diversity of experiences and the struggles and and the needs of people on on border spaces so um i i say that of course uh digital technologies in the context of fortress europe it's a very complex issue as media addressed and indeed it has become a powerful and effective tool for both control and agency so i think it's very important to highlight those paradoxes because it seems like a increased digital surveillance is there but at the same time it it's we we know less and less about uh the struggles of these people uh and and i think that's a very important point another point that uh that i would like to highlight in relation to to those uh complexities and contradictions of digital technologies in a context of fortress europe is that um the the higher um technologized right uh voters have become it it's like the the more insecure the journey for refugees have also uh you know become as well right so um it seems like the more technologies are there more deaths in the mediterranean and uh and i think that's also a very important point and and in in terms of reflecting on the power of uh of of technologies uh being used by government actors in in fortress europe and in this grim scenario i would say there is room for contestation so uh we know that migrants are developing migrants and refugees and strategies to protect their identities and uh in and yeah and and also to sort of somehow um yeah make do with with this situation so i will continue this conversation in the second question i will leave the floor for crew now yes let's go over to now uh thanks so much thanks for involving me here uh and congratulations also of course on the release of your important book i would like to pick up on two things one that amanda mentioned the increasing invisibility of of technologies of control and on myria's points on the historicizing uh what we're seeing in the contemporary moment and particularly also maybe historicizing our understanding of technologies and what maybe what we are seeing is actually part of a long duration of structural violence enacted through technologies so if you and please bear with me i've prepared a few couple of minutes response uh so i hope uh this comes across still at this moment of the day uh so if you as you've distilled at length in your book recent attempts of governments humanitarian agencies private parties in europe and beyond in order to solve the so-called refugee crisis i very much demonstrated an experimental technology based uh have turned to technology-based solutions or are showing techno-solutionism or technophilia even and the arsenal weaponized includes surveillance drones sensing robots ai intelligence lie detectors fingerprint biometric databases servers position based on iris scans dna testing blockchain technology experiments social media monitoring and predictive analytics and as amanda mentioned it seems that we know less and less about these technologicalized mechanisms and i think particularly now we're seeing and hearing less about these experiments under the covet 19 pandemic as journalistic accounts are dwindling and this is slowly slipping from our radar but actually i i firmly believe that technological accelerations very much happening so in a sense the refugee regime has become as you mentioned also a testing ground of technological experimentation and you've importantly in articulating technologies that as a testing ground you've also highlighted the roles of resistance and contestation and i think it's interesting to think both together so the technological experimentation as well as the contestation uh from a historical angle so how can we understand this what you describe as the nervous system of techno power from a historical point and a point of view because these technologies of control they have never or they haven't emerged from a hist and so from an a historical void so maybe seen from a longer duration the techno mediation of european colonialism and for example nazi totalitarianism have shown how plantations and later camps have been also turned into testing grounds for example for purposes of identification measurement of bodies administering bodies data firing bodies ranking and surveillance for example the birth of security securitization through biometrics or the methodology to recognize humans on the basis of physical or behavioral traits dates back to the racial science of colonialism and during the holocaust the nazis tested so-called hollerate punch cards to convey contain racial hygiene in 1943 that turret right consumed 1.5 million special printed cards which facilitate identification transportation and eventually extermination so the violence that we are seeing as part of the technological experiments which are increasingly under the radar are perhaps not an interruption or an exception but maybe they're reflective very much of a longitudinal status quo of exploitation um enders of uh of violence of uh subordinated groups then in parallel even though the many media theorists have argued that in the cybernetic circuit of technologies there's potential for contestation materially embedded in this in the technology for example wendy tune and others there's actually very little attention for these histories the actual empirical documented histories of resistance for example resistance in the colonial era and plantations and nazi camps but also in contemporary refugee camps these are very much under research they deserve much more attention and your book has shown the urgency of actually doing that taking account support native people's resistance to technologies thank you very much all of you um sarah would you introduce your second question now yes um which i think it connects extremely well with uh what's what you said and and i appreciate the complexity of the tensions and the complexity of the um dimension at stake when it comes to um addressing the also the historical um evolution of these debates um and they recognize the importance of keeping also known digital media centric perspective and to contextualize both resistance as well as um activism um and other uses of technologies so speaking of technology my second question is in the in the kind of towards the end of my book i talk about uh technologies for solidarity and how these acts of digital solidarity across and and and and beyond borders um take on different shapes and different forms and together really complicate that you might hear near landscape so my question for you is the following do you think that um these acts of resistance as you as you mentioned this act of um counter um resistance um can create a space where alternative frameworks to fortress europe can be imagined and do you think that these acts of mediated solidarity can create also space for more inclusive dialogues more inclusive sense of responsibility towards the other and towards refugees in this particular context can take place so we'll go to amanda first yes um sarah i think definitely mediated solidarity uh is an important instance of contestation and resistance um in particular considering um violent and oppressive voter practices and also exclusionary asylum systems and policies and fortress europe for this question i would like to highlight two points which i think are relevant when reflecting on the potential of uh digital solidarity and refugee settings uh first we we are aware you've discussed in your book uh extensively that technology solutions they can enhance uh discrepancy and reinforce power imbalances and i in in in this case in in the context of uh fortress europe but also in other contexts of forced displacement uh you you said uh also well the the proliferation of hackathons apps and platforms that were developed in 2015 beyond to face the refugee crisis and and mostly developed by activists eight organizations private actors to assist right refugees through digital access so despite the best intentions uh policy documents academic uh articles including your book as well if you've mentioned that over a thousand of platforms and apps did not take into consideration the the realities and the lives of of the refugees and migrants and you know issues of surveillance literacies and and also visibility because many people um didn't even know that certain apps and platforms existed but also uh lack of trust in those tools accessing unknown websites and having to giving their data as an issue right so in a nutshell although these uh these issues became visible in the context of eu refugee reception and settlement it seems like in many instances lessons have not been learned and if in fact i think these issues continue and they have been uh perpetuated and transferred to other contexts of forced migration taking the example of uh changing a little bit uh the context here but the the migrate the venezuelan migration crisis and brazil in the northwestern region which is a border region in the country uh we've seen now recently in the context of covid crisis collaborations among different stakeholders humanitarian actors uh ngos and and and so forth uh coming up with all kinds of digital solutions that remain disconnected from uh the realities of of migrants on the ground uh to give you an example recently there was this whatsapp group that was created by um a local ngo and partnership with unhcr in a region and this whatsapp group was uh serving it supposed to serve as a channel for information for venezuela's amid covet situation however venezuelans reported that they could not even write messages only the administrators and uh and you know this resulted in mainly leaving the group and they also had to choose how they would spend the credits they have right uh either on uh well websites or other apps that they they would feel more uh you know they would get more information or more uh or or having their voices heard somehow or in this app right uh so i think i guess this background just to go to go back to to the point it is important to bring attention to also important initiatives that have been developed with and by refugees and asylum seekers through and in a digital such as the creation of of support and help groups and whatsapp to facilitate translation of the government measures during the cove pandemic but also to provide mental health support or other forms of other kinds of relevant information for accessing rights and public services so uh and and in all of those became essential uh to fill in the gaps of states asylum and integration systems during the pandemic as we've seen and so it's very important to assist on the first point of of on the principles of sustainability collaboration uh and um and ethics right when it comes to developing those digital interventions otherwise these practices will continue to perpetuate in a second point very briefly it's about our roles as researchers um and contributing also to creating these spaces of digital solidarity so for instance through our engagement uh in activist networks and initiatives to expose our asymmetries and exclusionary policies and practices among government actors and agencies like frontex also we should continue engaging in collaborative efforts to develop ways to make our scholarship our research public so that we can give back to the communities and populations we study thank you so um would you like to add anything there uh sure i'd like to echo a few points indeed that amanda also mentioned so what i know about uh solidarity in the humanitarian landscape i should emphasize i've learned from reading studies like yours sarah but i also like to put another point which i've learned from doing field work with young refugees particularly here in the context of netherlands which is to maybe rethink solidarity not only as happening between non-migrant groups and migrant groups but also as as a very much also internal dynamic among migrant communities and which is also what amanda hinted that indeed at the importance and urgency also of informal networks which migrants maintain particularly in light of the contemporary pandemic for example after the 2015 uh crisis we saw uh journalistic accounts but also research on informal whatsapp groups and facebook groups which were in a few accounts the so-called trip advisor for refugees and scholars use terms like do-it-yourself migrants kind of celebrating uh perhaps also fetishizing this kind of resilient uh state of resilience of refugees adopting advanced technologies to make do of these hard and difficult circumstances but to a certain extent these networks beyond beyond kind of the hype remain super important uh that's also what i'm hearing in conversations with with young people now is that in situations now when uh access to for example government support schooling systems uh formal institutions is increasingly uh difficult or at distance and increasingly limited uh uh young people of refugee background that i am in touch with increasingly turn back towards uh to peer-to-peer uh to migrant networks uh to connect with family members exactly to kind of fill in the gaps of information precarity uh fill in the gaps of fractures in in the information the availability of information as also rumors and and so-called fake news circulate heavily but particularly now in these pandemic times thanks thank you koon miriah thank you um i i think many important points have been made um already and i and i'll try to add to these uh uh brilliant illustrations because of course uh uh amanda and also come with their reflections i think from that experience of the field like uh sarah does um so i would like to make some more uh abstract observations if you allow me um like sarah i was very intrigued and very interested in all these uh projects that have exploded after 2015 um around digital solidarity and support for migrants to develop their digital skills so i think of course this is a very mixed bag and i think the others have touched upon it um already but i think it's a it's a mixed bag that is very troubling and in many ways invite us to think and understand uh the complexities of thinking again uh through uh technology as data as a project that this uh that in its own right uh covers uh carry certain values um and certain potentials so um i would like to first say that these forms of digital solidarity especially those forms of digital solidarity that support digital skills for uh for migrants and refugees represent new forms of solidarity that compensate to a large extent uh for the failings of the state the failings of the state and the deliberate withdrawal of most of the european states from the protection of fundamental rights and welfare more generally and i think the role of the state is something that perhaps we want to touch upon it a bit more later on in the discussion as well so these digital solidarities that uh uh we're discussing here are solidarities of crisis and as such their solidarities of despair but also of hope a bottom-up response to the needs of migrants for employment but also a response to their demands and their right for recognition of their agency and their multiple capabilities but of course i think on a second level we need to uh not forget the ideological drive behind many expressions of digital solidarity uh because of course solidarity and even more so digital solidarity are not neutral concepts as we know so very often these projects are driven i think and as sarah mentioned as well by the desire to do good but also to do good as this is in a value that is increasingly understood within the uh hegemonic value system a value system that puts responsibility on individuals um that puts responsibility upon individuals there is the individual who helps and the individual who is helped only when herself or himself demonstrates that extreme talent that extreme resilience and determination to make a a success out of a very difficult situation so the project of digital solidarity very often is a project where we see the exemplification of an entrepreneurial individualism and this can of course benefit some and as i have seen also in my own research those who benefit from this ethos are of course usually young people well-educated people usually men but of course it's an ethos that leaves many behind and the third element of this of this discussion i think is that many of these projects are driven by a techno utopianism and what this means is that digital skills are assumed to be in themselves a force of positive change for individual migrants lives but it also means that digital skills are seen as a pathway for gaining access to rights via the market and especially a digital pathway in order to become a good migrant and this is something that sarah mentioned already as migrants are called upon to become individuals who overcome marginality through again those personal and unique traits of brazilians talent and ability to succeed in the digital economy thank you um sarah i think you have one more question and we'll take just some very short responses on that final question and then i just want to remind our audience that we have a q a box that you can add your own questions to so for the final part of the event we'll move to your questions but um back to your final question sarah um thank you yes very very briefly because these this discussion has been already very in-depth and very rich um so i'm really grateful to be to be here to be able to to discuss with you um and i agree again the tension between techno utopianism and the need to do something and how these different languages communicate and how the language of the civic tech community communicate with the political language um and and and the other communities as well which which i i i try to extrapolate in my in my book and he also mentioned an important dimension which i briefly touched upon during my presentation and i took more in my book which is the notion of epic and the notion of the ethical technology which seems a contradiction in terms um especially when we when we debate with all the tensions and problems that you mentioned already so thinking about that we have a final comment a brief comment on um on this contradiction and on the needs uh if you think that there is a need to uh to talk more about ethical tech and where do we need to go in order to be able to to break down the notion of ethical technology and shall i take up sure um yeah i i think this question actually uh allows us to turn our gaze also inwards and not only to think about the ethics of technology as a uh as a kind of autonomous force which happens in the world uh out there which us researchers can observe and scrutinize but i think we ourselves are very much implicated in these uh technologies so our ethics as uh researchers as being part of the larger migration industry i think here are crucial uh to scrutinize and here we can perhaps think of uh one of the instances is the trend of course of big data and data vacation uh a twin force which is kind of trusted as a solution to challenges as a kind of trusted way to offer objective neutral uh decision making opportunities should actually be scrutinized and also raised uh to be as it should be questioned for exactly how they reproduce certain categories of mobile subjects categories of desirable migrants desirable expatriates versus undesirable refugees who can be abandoned so here like other scholars before us i think and as also amanda just highlighted we should further also in our work politicize migration processes also to understand exactly under which conditions the migrant is produced and how we ourselves in our scholarship are also reproducing these figures and here i think we can also take cues from a recent report by the um special repertoire on contemporary forms of racism racial discrimination xenophobia and related intolerance which exactly highlighted the digital border as a kind of exemplary example where things are going horribly wrong in terms of datification and big data so i turn inwards in terms of ethics of technologies i'm i think i'm invited to comment next uh just very briefly i i i think this is a this is a very important point that kuhn has made and of course i think the other element of responsibility is that uh we shouldn't only be aware of the kind of research we produce but i think the challenge with technology is how as we have repeatedly mentioned all of us i think how uh the digital border is often hidden um so uh the challenge here is to make it more visible and i think the the repressive power of the digital border becoming more visible is something that we should uh um act upon as academics but also in not only through our work but also in our participation in networks that bring together i think migrants activists but also academic communities i think it's me now right also very briefly uh when i when when we think about like ethics and and technologies and also i'm going to debate a little bit from what uh kunin and miriah addressed uh for me it inevitably leads to questions of of data literacy and uh which also uh connects to media literacy digital literacy and and that's the responsibility of uh it's an education mission right so that's the responsibility also of tech actors organizations who are developing technologies aiming for refugees and migrants and or in those contexts of crisis to be able to improve communication efforts about data-driven technologies and i think there is room for debate there is room for conversation but there is a long way to go and uh yeah transparency and and more uh more efforts needs to also come from from those who are developing these technologies we know that it's very easy to say this and oh communication needs to be improved people need to know why they're using certain technologies what is required from them it's super uh what i'm saying now very uh old topic but but i think that these conversations need to we need to insist on that um and so so yeah it for me it's a challenge also of of data literacy and the the data literacy not only from from like people who need to learn about how these technologies uh are being used towards them but also the those who are producing they need to improve their communication efforts to to be able to provide more transparency uh about the the technologies they are providing yeah thank you very much amanda and all of you um i'm sure that during the course of the final questions from the audience sorry you're going to have an opportunity to respond to this fantastic debate um but let's turn now to some of those questions because we've got quite a few here to to look at and the first question is from our colleague um barfin emery setting and she she thanks you all for your very stimulating contributions to to the discussion and sarah she's asking if you could really develop your point about the relationships between border borders and bordering and identity formation she says that you mention processes of negation and valorisation but could you say a bit more about this process of the construction of identity yes um thank you for for the question uh barfing um so yes so in the in the um in the first half of the book i talk about the evolution of borders and i examine borders from from a very practical point of view including uh looking at borders as mechanism of identity formation and what i'm arguing is that um but if we look at uh bordering practices and if we look at how technologies are are used to exercise the surveillance we can see a number of tensions a number of contradictions between the negation of identity and the augmentation of identity i think so on the one hand we have the political negation of the identity voice and agency of these people but on the other hand we have an augmentation i think of their bodies so when their bodies are transformed into biometric data that machine can read can process can sort out we can see a sort of hypervisibility of these bodies at the same time also a reduction of these bodies into pieces of information so i think it's really interesting to see the tensions that are playing out in the field of bordering and also in the way representation works when it comes to um to refugee representations as as as you as the other speakers have very eloquently talked about and and and also kind of moving away from the binary oppositions between identity and authority and between um looking at uh refugees as either victims of threats or good people or entrepreneurial subjects or criminals so i think that the notion of identity is incredibly important to discuss in relation to borders technologies and also in relation to activism because it does highlight a number of tensions and contradictions um that i think are incredibly important to break to break down so negation and visibility at the same time what do we make how do we make sense of these tensions it's one of the questions that the book asks thank you sarah and barfin for asking the question um the next question is really about how we as an academic community can respond to some of these developments so that some of the guest speakers might like to come in on this and it and that the the question mentions the eu's new pact on migration and asylum um renationalization policies the employment of new technologies which have been mentioned during the discussion um and concerns about the increasing securitization of the borders so all of this we really covered in the discussion but the question is really asking how should we respond as an academic community um it's such an important question um which which we we briefly um touched in terms of responsibility that we as researchers and academics have when we debate and we are when we ask questions when we interview um communities and individuals and and i think that it comes really to what was mentioned before in terms of accountability in term in terms of transparency and in terms of moral responsibility as well which i think was which is one of the problems that i highlighted since the very beginning of my book we talked about technologies we talked about surveillance we talked about digital borders and digital humanitarians but we need to really tackle these questions from the perspective of the peoples the the people that are involved and they are struggling daily with these questions and distinctions and and the pushback and the security systems and the borders and these voices are not often accounted as much as they should which is why i wanted to give them the voice give them the opportunity to tell us whether or not um and how this connectivity plays out and how their experience um and how they want their experience been operated and the chapter of my book is about is about these and and i talk about the fragmented methodology um when i when i think about interrogating these questions because it's it's an incredibly sensitive question and we as researchers and academics find ourselves in a very tricky position um and the idea also balancing out our positionality as researchers working and living in the west and working and living in europe and and and these communities it's an incredibly um yes these are fragmented and fragmented um methodology fragmented communication but i'm sure that myria has um yeah i think myria would like to briefly respond as well uh thank you yes uh two points um one uh holding authority accountable which uh perhaps also uh sarah uh implied as well uh we're in a position of authority uh we have a symbolic power that many of the people who we're engaging with don't so we have that responsibility not only to do research but also to speak to uh to systems of public knowledge second we have to go out there and do research and get back to our field work and hopefully the pandemic will allow us to do that again not only do field work when migrants come to us in our cities and our safe spaces but we need to go out there in the outer border of europe because right now precisely because of what has been noted in that question there are tens of thousands of people who are who are being pushed back and their experience is being completely silenced and unreported and of course uh because of these regulations um in combination to the pandemic a lot of these realities are being hidden and we have a huge responsibility i think to bring visibility to those new experiences of the of the border thank you maria i just wanted to say that that question was from ilke sanlier yuksel who's at kukarova university in turkey okay um we're going to go to another question now and this is really a question about the role of institutions and the questioner asks about really expanding on the concerns you've raised about the gathering of data sarah both from the migrant point of view and an institutional point of view as well and the questioner is wondering whether institutions like the un should have a greater role in providing some sort of technological framework that could be more easily trusted by migrants so it's really about the role of institutions in this data collection processes um yes um thank you for the question um the notion of trust is incredibly important in this discussion and it's something that i've raised with my respondents both with the tech for social good communities as well as with migrants have interviewed and it is it it plays a similar pattern it's it's a question of important um concern as well when i interviewed uh migrants they raised trust as a problematic aspect also when it comes to more established organizations and institutions like the u.n which is something that i also witness with other volunteers who actually went um to refugee camps in greece um to um to support to provide help and they um told me that migrants were incredibly um [Music] did not really want to engage with more mainstream or more institutional organizations they didn't trust them um so they had an important they didn't trust more official organizations of big organizations like like the u.n for example when they prefer to trust more local communities or local volunteers to be able to receive updated information for example even to be able to have a closer channel of communication with them and and when it came to also trust in with reference to technologies of solidarity um one of the contradiction that emerged was i think the gap between the intentions of the institutions and the attention of the tech community and what migrants thought about that and as amanda mentioned before um i think it was amanda the idea that they don't migrants don't use many of the applications or many of the they don't even know many of the initiatives that are developed for them um and some of them they told me what we need we use google we use facebook we use facebook whatsapp and viber but that was it so clearly there is a mismatch between intentions and and short-term and long-term impact and trust is an important part of this of distension and this contradiction and it is trust about people but it is also obviously trust about technologies and is trust about the use of data and that comes with literacy as amanda mentioned and comes with the um we did with the lack of accountability and and and the lack of accountability on the part of the institutions as amelia also mentioned so uh would like to make a small comment about that as well yeah exactly picking up where you left uh uh i think the question of accountability uh i think that's one of the major points which really should be much more central uh to our discussion and because indeed the production of the state of exception uh has actually uh uh out out ruled many of the institutional mechanisms in place so law and books is completely different from now law and practice so what we see on the ground are breaches of many international treaties un treaties but also for example recent eu guidelines such as the privacy guidelines gdpr these are somehow suspended in this exceptional moment and and the rights of suspended subjects like migrant subjects are dismissed under this heading and i think in terms of seeking an institutional answer here the answer also lies with governmentality by indeed holding our political systems accountable because this is it's a political decision that people are dying at the border now every day and there are institutions which try indeed to put this on the agenda and try to make this visible of what's happening but it's uh i think politicians who are not listening here thank you um sarah we're going to go to the next question now which is really about the relationship between different forms of solidarity emerging in europe at the moment and i think this is from steve crosson the dean of our school of media um so it's it's really about whether you considered the relationship between forms of digital solidarity that are emerging and new forms of solidarity that have underpinned the rise of populist nationalism so very different kinds of um solidarity in a way and it the way in which populist national nationalism has of course captured political agendas across europe so it's a question about forms of
2021-01-24