Dr. Griet Steel on the "Migration and Technology" research day ( November 7th, 2023 — MIGLOBA, CESSMIR and BIRMM)
Author: Griet Steel Posted on: 20th November 2023
Dr. Griet Steel is an anthropologist who has been involved in several international research projects focusing on gender, technology, mobility and sustainable urban development. She has extensive field experience in several Latin American countries and since 2014, she focuses on urban transformations, female online entrepreneurship, and land governance in Khartoum. She is currently working as a guest professor at the University of Antwerp, Department of Sociology.
Reflection on the Research day: “Migration and Technology”
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It is the 7th of November and I am attending the research day on migration and technology at the University of Antwerp. As I have worked in the Netherlands for the last couple of years, I am not so familiar with the academic scene on migration research in Flanders. As such, I am happy to learn from the introduction that there are three engaged, interdisciplinary, university-wide institutions (or networks) bundling the experiences and practices on migration research at Flemish universities: MIGLOBA, CESSMIR and BIRMM. Today, these three institutions have organized a research day on migration and technology because as Prof. Dr. Belloni, one of the organizers of the event, explains in her welcome speech “technology is everywhere in the migrant experience.”
Prof. Dr. Tuba Bircan opens the day by introducing us to the world of big data and artificial intelligence in migration studies. She starts her keynote speech by displaying the stereotypical images that disappear for simple Google searches, such as “migrant” and “refugee”. She therewith shows that our whole conceptualization of migration, and by extension migration research in general, is driven by big data such as algorithms. By a plethora of other eye-opening examples, Prof. Tuba illustrates that big data and artificial intelligence are not able to capture the nuance that is needed to study and/or direct migration processes. They are made by computer scientists and data specialist who have no feeling with the real life implications of the data they are presenting and analyzing.
The human dimension of migration is elaborated by the second keynote of Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Costa (University of Antwerp) who introduces us to the ethnography of social media and migration. On the basis of some vivid examples of her own research experiences in South-East Turkey and Italy, Prof. Costa advocates for long term ethnographic fieldwork in the study of digital migration. By zooming in on the specific concept ‘homeland’, she argues that placemaking on social media is fully entangled in the complexity and minutiae of people’s offline lives and routines. As such, the ‘on’ and the ’off’ line need to be studied as a continuum in migration research.
The third keynote, Prof. Dr. Julien Jeandesboz (ULB), looks for the best of both worlds by studying border control and surveillance as socio-technical processes. Through his lecture he demonstrates that border control and surveillance dynamics are neither pure technical, nor pure social processes. At the same time he claims that technological practices of surveillance are of all ages. The scale and the speed have increased tremendously, but the attempt to use “techne” to identify and surveille people can be traced back to the 16th century. Technological advancement will however never stop people from moving. Therefore discussions on migration governance should step aside from narrow discussions on controlling migration and surveilling borders. At least, that is the political stand Prof. Jeandesboz takes in the Q&A when discussing the governance consequences of his findings.
With these inspiring keynote speeches we start the afternoon sessions in which the group of scholars split-up for three workshop. There is one workshop on big data by Prof. Dr. Jonas Wood and Dr. Dries Lens, one workshop on online ethnography by Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Costa and myself, and one workshop on border and migration enforcement by Prof. Dr. Julien Jeandesboz, Soline Ballet and Imane Bendra. As we can only attend one of these three workshops, I cannot give an overview of the main discussions in these sessions, but personally I liked the format and appreciated the space for more direct interaction and discussion.
I enthusiastically cycle home with some new ideas and concrete insights for my further research on digital entrepreneurship and migration. There is one particular issue that keeps on circling through my head. As one of the participant stated in the Q&A: "What is the significance of research on migration and digital technology for the migrants themselves?" Honestly I felt a little bit overwhelmed by this “why question”. It is only in the evening that I can find a tentative answer on this question that was not addressed to me in particular, but important for all migration scholars to critically reflect upon.
For dinner, my family is invited by a Moroccan-Sudanese migrant family with five little children. Technology, and in this case, social media is indeed everywhere. Children are running behind each other because my son does not want to appear in one of the TikTok video’s the other children are making. When I want to take a picture of the delicious meal that is served by my Moroccan friend, I am stopped by her children with the comment that “It is not nice for the poor people to see pictures of generously served food”. At tea time, we are looking online for a second-hand pressure cooker for the guest woman. It is interesting to get an idea of the completely other selection criteria my migrant friends use to evaluate the confidentiality of the vendor, and thus the product, than I would use. At the same time I am positively surprised by the digital literacy of one of the other guests: a Sudanese woman with whom I hardly had a conversation within the couple of years I have known her. With her smartphone in her hand she knows to overcome the language barriers that stand in between us offline interactions. In no time she knows to find the best and cheapest online space to buy the product from.
After having discussed the relation between migration and technology among academics, it is so nice to end the day in such a vivid, real life migrant setting. It reminds me to the fact that I could not agree more with prof. Costa’s argument that we need to remain connected to the field, both online and offline, to study the dynamic relations between migration and technology. At the same time, it makes me realize how important it is to keep on contributing to in-depth and muti-disciplinary insights on the interaction between migration and technology. It is not because we know that technology is everywhere that we already have sufficient academic knowledge on the concrete meaning and impact of it on the migration experience in all its dimensions.