Histories of humanitarian technophilia: how imaginaries of media technologies have shaped migration infrastructures

Abstract

Contemporary migration infrastructures commonly reflect imaginaries of technological solutionism. Fantasies of efficient ordering, administrating and limiting of refugee bodies in space and time through migration infrastructures are distinctive, but not novel as they draw on long historical lineages. Drawing on archival records, we present a case-study on post-World-War-II refugee encampments. By highlighting the deeply historical role of media in migration governance, i.e. the act of mediation through technological infrastructuring, we seek to bring together the fields of migration studies and media studies. We argue that this crossfertilization helps to historically untangle power dimensions, inherent workings, as well as human experiences imbued in the tech-based management of migration 'crises'. Uncovering historical underpinnings of digitalized asylum regimes through the prism of media infrastructures, and socio-technical imaginaries surrounding them, points at continuities and genealogies of containing and managing people in time and space, reaching into technologies of colonial and fascist projects. We thus seek to explore the assumptions that drive the build-up of migration and media infrastructures: How are migrants, camps, media and their infrastructural interrelations imagined? Which cultural horizons are reflected in technologies, which functions are imagined for whom, and how are utilitarian ideas about humanitarianism and migration control embedded? ARTICLE HISTORY

Apps, mobilities, and migration in the Covid-19 pandemic: Covid technology and the control of migrant workers in Singapore

“…What emerges strikingly in our analysis is the ways that digital migrant infrastructures evolve with their shaping imaginaries of control, technophilia (Seuferling and Leurs, 2021), and tech solutionism (Milan, 2020) largely unquestioned. This is of grave concern, given that, in the effort to imagine, plan, and communicate the improvement of accommodation and support for migrant workers in the post-Covid future, smartphones and apps are set to play an important role in the integrated ecosystem the government is continuing to build (see Figure 4).…”

Doing Digital Migration Studies:

“…The relationships between migration, infrastructures, securitization and dataf ication are complex and multi-layered Pugliese, 2010;Walters, 2018). In media, STS and migration studies, infrastructure scholars seek to open up the "black box" of migration and technologies by revealing the assumptions, ideas and processes that underpin ideologies of migration governance that are baked into technologies (Seuferling & Leurs, 2021). From an infrastructural perspective we can seek to explore "the digital force in forced migration" (Witteborn, 2018, p. 21), for example by addressing how migration has historically been used as a tool for political and social control, and how this development shapes the contemporary datafication and digitization of migration governance and control.…”

“…In the analysis below I am concerned with understanding how McKinsey's "data craving" (Lemberg-Pedersen & Haioty, 2020) practices are structured by the "desire for order over what many consider disorderly flows" that lies at the core of the technocratic paradigm of "migration management" (Ashutosh & Mountz, 2011, p. 28; original emphasis; see also Watkins, 2020). More specifically, I build on the work of Seuferling and Leurs (2021) in approaching the tranche of confidential McKinsey documents as a window into the bureaucratic imaginaries that underpin the EU hotspot regime. In their analysis of the intertwining of media and migration infrastructures, Seuferling & Leurs (2021, p. 674) reveal how particular imaginaries-of mobility control, of camps, of illegalized migrants-are encoded within the "forms of mediation, including tools, discourses, images, and protocols" which facilitate the everyday management of refugee populations.…”

“…What measures did McKinsey consultants propose for the "optimization" of asylum procedures on the Greek islands? What bureaucratic "imaginaries" (Seuferling & Leurs, 2021) of mobility control are encoded in McKinsey's vision of a more efficient and orderly asylum process? In approaching these questions, the chapter offers a granular account of McKinsey's blueprint for a "streamlined end-to-end asylum process."…”

Big Tech to the Rescue? An Ethnographic Study of Corporate Humanitarianism in the Refugee Crisis

“…Scholarship on humanitarian 29 innovation and technology (Jacobsen, 2015Sandvik & Lohne, 2014) has analyzed how digital technologies are used by humanitarian organizations to aid refugees (Cheesman, 2020b;Read et al, 2016b;Roth & Luczak-Roesch, 2018). However, scholars have also documented how digital technologies are employed by governments and private sector actors to manage, control, and surveil migration flows (Bircan & Korkmaz, 2021;Nedelcu & Soysüren, 2022;Seuferling & Leurs, 2021). As part of this development, tech companies become crucial actors in the humanitarian space as the producers of these digital technologies and as experts in analyzing big data.…”