Technocolonialism: Digital Innovation and Data Practices in the Humanitarian Response to Refugee Crises

Abstract

Digital innovation and data practices are increasingly central to the humanitarian response to recent refugee and migration crises. In this article, I introduce the concept of technocolonialism to capture how the convergence of digital developments with humanitarian structures and market forces reinvigorates and reshapes colonial relationships of dependency. Technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that data and digital innovation play in entrenching power asymmetries between refugees and aid agencies and ultimately inequalities in the global context. This occurs through a number of interconnected processes: by extracting value from refugee data and innovation practices for the benefit of various stakeholders; by materializing discrimination associated with colonial legacies; by contributing to the production of social orders that entrench the “coloniality of power”; and by justifying some of these practices under the context of “emergencies.” By reproducing the power asymmetries of humanitarianism, data and innovation practices become constitutive of humanitarian crises themselves.

Self-Sovereignty for Refugees? The Contested Horizons of Digital Identity

“…For example, when metrics of poverty are used to predictively identify child abusers, or when in homeland security settings, all credibility, authority and credibility are attached to a fixed, racialised risk identities which vulnerable or marginalised people are left to dispute themselves (Amoore 2006;Eubanks 2017). Drawing on the example of the Rohingya refugees, Madianou argues that identity technologies produce and 'ossify' discriminations and in doing so, data practices bolster rather than mitigate inequalities and actually can be constitutive of humanitarian crises (Madianou 2019a). If SSI continues to be routinely depoliticised in the aid industry, the particular ways in which identities are configured, the social biases they instil, and the adverse consequences of this social sorting will be neglected.…”

“…Methodologically, logics are a 'basic unit of explanation' and can be 'usefully contrasted with laws, self-interpretation and mechanisms' (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 8). They are useful for empirical research as a way of characterising social processes, and the styles of reasoning around them, by situating them within their specific context (Cremin 2012;Glynos and Howarth 2007;Lutz 2017;Madianou 2019a). Logics are suitable for this research because they provide analytical clarity and can be used to 'characterise, explain and criticise social phenomena' (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 8) but at the same time recognise inherent complexity, messiness and uncertainty.…”

“…Logics are suitable for this research because they provide analytical clarity and can be used to 'characterise, explain and criticise social phenomena' (Glynos and Howarth 2007, 8) but at the same time recognise inherent complexity, messiness and uncertainty. For instance, Madianou (2019aMadianou ( , 2019b shows that a logics approach is fruitful in pinpointing the core assumptions and concepts about technology in a rapidly changing and multifaceted sector such as the aid industry.…”

“…This paper proposes that SSI should be considered part of a longer genealogy of classification systems that have not merely represented people, but have made or enacted them as governable subjects (Scheel, Ruppert, and Ustek-Spilda 2019;Scott 1998). Identification regimes sustain power geometries, biases and discriminations, and the technologies they rely on should be seen as part of the political struggle to control people's movement (Isin and Ruppert 2019;Madianou 2019a;Scheel 2019). The work of imagining, debating and developing potential border technologies like SSI is itself a practice of bordering and enactment (Bourne, Johnson, and Lisle 2015).…”

A Second-Order Disaster? Digital Technologies During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…There is a further secondary effect: placing so much emphasis on technological solutions risks depoliticizing the COVID-19 emergency. The logic of technological solutionism has the capacity to occlude the workings of technology and digital capitalism with extraordinary ease (Madianou, 2019). This matters because now, more than ever, there is an imperative to collectively reimagine the future after the pandemic.…”