Technology, Power, and Social Inclusion: Afghan Refugee Women’s Interaction with ICT in Germany

Abstract

Afghan refugee women settle in Germany to escape persecution by militant groups and social marginalization in Afghanistan, among other things. They face challenges in Germany, such as language barriers, demanding bureaucratic requirements from German administrations, and discrimination. Academic and public discourses promote the information and communication technologies (ICT)-enabled social inclusion of refugees into the host society. ICT is widely seen as an essential tool to support refugees. Against this backdrop, this paper presents a focus group study with 14 Afghan refugee women in Germany to understand their experiences with technology: How do Afghan refugee women in Germany experience ICT? What structural factors influence their interaction with technology? What are the design features in an application that can support their settlement in Germany? This paper uses a critical perspective inspired by Black feminist theory to foreground the dynamics of power in Afghan refugee women’s experiences with ICT. The analysis reveals significant barriers to the participation of Afghan refugee women in German digital society, like digital illiteracy and the need for safety and privacy, making accessing technology difficult. Designs of ICT that may benefit Afghan women offer audio messages instead of text, real-time assistance, intuitive commands, and registration without an email address. Apart from the analysis of Afghan refugee women’s interaction with technology in German society, this paper reflects on the German migration management infrastructure and its potential to adapt more to the communication practices of refugees, including offering in-person services for Afghan refugee women.

How Social Media Affordances Mediate the Digital Diaspora: Latinx Perspectives

“…Costa (2018) described how one user in her ethnographic fieldwork used social media "to conceal and display different aspects of himself to different audiences" (p. 3645). While "previous research has suggested that anonymity in online settings is likely to encourage verbal attacks and insults" (Maia & Rezende, 2016, p. 124, emphasis added), our focus here is not the anonymity of social media platforms, per se, but the platforms that afford private communication, 3 such as WhatsApp and Snap (Schelenz, 2023;Trauthig & Woolley, 2023). With these social media platforms, one can communicate with friends and family in a private, one-to-few manner.…”

“…For example, geographically isolated Queer individuals have been able to connect with other members of the Queer community (Craig et al, 2021;Hanckel et al, 2019). Many individuals report that connecting with family is a significant factor in their use of social media (Schelenz, 2023;Whiting & Williams, 2013). Similarly, Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland maintained connections with their homeland via social media (Khvorostianov et al, 2012;Mallapragada, 2006;Mitra, 2001;Vorobeva et al, 2022).…”