Our research questions
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Digital connectivity
How are digital technologies changing aid to migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees? |
Cairo Amman Bank iris scan capability in Jordan
photo credit: Nadine Hassouneh |
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Financial inclusion
What digital technologies and infrastructures support cash assistance to asylum-seekers and refugees? |
OneCard - Humanitarian Assistance in Jordan Card
photo credit: Nadine Hassouneh |
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Refugee governance How do migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees navigate the digitalisation of asylum and humanitarian aid? |
ATM utilised by refugees, migrants, asylum seekers
on Samos photo credit: Aila Spathopoulou |
Background
For governments and international organizations, a connection to the Internet and financial networks has become integral to migration, asylum and refugee policy-making. Yet migrants’ up-take has varied widely, leading to crucial questions about how these technologies transform how migrants engage with organizations, state agencies, and the wider communities in which they live. To better understand this transformation, our project explores three kinds of technology:
Communication
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Refugee and asylum agencies, as well as humanitarian aid organisations, increasingly rely on automated SMS, communication apps like WhatsApp and Viber and online portals to share information. Asylum applications and identify verification are also moving online, raising new questions about internet access, data ethics and privacy. Our project explores how these technological changes invite new actors into the refugee and asylum sector and are creating new spaces of refugee governance.
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Communicating via an app
photo credit: Hanna Ruszczyk |
Cash
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Humanitarian and post-disaster response has radically changed its approach to aid provision in recent years, moving from direct food aid to cash. Across our four research sites (Greece, Jordan, Lebanon and the UK), asylum agencies and aid organisations have used debit cards, iris scans, vouchers, and direct cash dispersal, as well. These changes have accompanied a broader shift in the geographies of refuge, from encampment to urban asylum accommodation, dispersal to suburban areas, and the use of private housing. Our project explores how cash--and the technologies used to disberse it--change the geographies of asylum and refugee aid provision.
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Red card facilitates humanitarian assistance in
Lebanon photo credit: Nadine Hassouneh |
Identity
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Communication and cash technologies made data central to refugee administration, asylum claim processing, and humanitarian responses to displacement. State and international organisations now face a common conundrum: how to validate people's identity and claims for protection. Blockchain, biometric data, and app-based authentification are championed as groundbreaking solutions. Our project explores experimentation with data- and blockchain-based identification.
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IrisGuard, iris scan technology utilized by some
UN agencies in Jordan in cooperation with Cairo Amman Bank photo credit: Nadine Hassouneh |