Between Empowerment and Surveillance: Forced Migration and Information and Communication Technologies

Abstract

Amidst a surge in migration from conflict zones across the Middle East and Africa, leading to the arrival of more than a million displaced individuals in Europe, a nascent research field, primarily explored by European scholars, examines how information and communication technologies (ICTs) reshape refugees’ experiences during and after migration. This emerging inquiry explores how ICTs can empower displaced migrants, enhancing their resilience and enabling survival, family connection, adaptation, inclusion, and rights advocacy. Concurrently, recent studies in the area of border and surveillance underscore technology’s pivotal role in shaping security-oriented agendas within migration and mobility regimes across the US, EU, and other nations. This study systematically and critically reviews digital migration literature from 2006 to 2021 with metadata obtained and synthesized from Scopus and Dimensions databases, investigating the interplay between forced migrants’ use of digital technologies to navigate restrictive migration systems and their interaction with surveillance technologies. It seeks to identify the ambivalent positions in digital migration studies and assess migrants’ potential empowerment through ICTs.