Connected migrants: how digital technology is becoming a priority

Before the advent of new inform­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies (ICT), mov­ing abroad meant cut­ting off from a per­son’s roots and dis­tan­cing from fam­ily, without always suc­ceed­ing in integ­rat­ing into the host coun­try. But the arrival of mobile phones, the Inter­net, apps and online ser­vices in the 1990s and 2000s has sig­ni­fic­antly trans­formed the lives of mobile people and the study of migra­tion phe­nom­ena. “With the advent of digit­al tech­no­lo­gies, I wanted to show that a new type of migrant was emer­ging – that of the con­nec­ted migrant,” explains Dana Dimin­es­cu, soci­olo­gist, lec­turer and research­er at Télé­com Par­is (IP Par­is) and dir­ect­or of DiasporaLab.

With the emer­gence of digit­al tools, migrants have become con­nec­ted to tech­no­logy. Using What­s­App, Snapchat, Ins­tagram or Tik­Tok, they can stay in touch with their fam­il­ies, who may be loc­ated more than 10,000 km away¹. Tele­phones, digit­al ser­vices and social net­works mean they can be reached every day, any­where in the world. Migrants carry their “home” in their pock­et, in their flat or even when out walk­ing in the city.

To demon­strate the emer­gence of the “con­nec­ted migrant”, Dana Dimin­es­cu laid the found­a­tions for a new approach to the study of migra­tion with her Dia­spor­aLab pro­gramme. “This involves the study of migra­tion in rela­tion to ICT, but it is also a sub-field of digit­al soci­ology². A migrant equipped with digit­al tools leaves traces. In 2003, I wrote an epi­stem­o­lo­gic­al mani­festo on digit­al migra­tion stud­ies, which I have been study­ing for some twenty years.” The pro­gramme involves find­ing digit­al traces of dif­fer­ent aspects of migrants’ lives, while com­bin­ing them with a more tra­di­tion­al meth­od­o­logy. To do this, the research­er decided to use semi-auto­mat­ic algorithms. After the data col­lec­ted by the algorithm has been gathered, the research­ers review it them­selves to ana­lyse it more thor­oughly. “This choice was time-con­sum­ing, but it allowed us to obtain a much more con­trolled final corpus.”

Con­nec­ted migrants use new tech­no­lo­gies to nav­ig­ate between dif­fer­ent envir­on­ments: from the coun­try of emig­ra­tion to the coun­try of immig­ra­tion, and the jour­ney between the two. Access to digit­al ser­vices, a bank card and a bio­met­ric pass­port facil­it­ate their belong­ing to dif­fer­ent worlds: civil insti­tu­tions, fam­ily net­works, pro­fes­sion­al net­works, friend­ship net­works³ and so on. “The Inter­net has been an excel­lent tool for dia­spor­as, mak­ing it easi­er for migrants to come togeth­er, but the net­work has also cre­ated com­munity bubbles,” she explains. “Some­times migrants seek to break free from their fam­ily circle, but tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions become a form of remote con­trol for the family.”

Digit­al migra­tion stud­ies also seek to bet­ter under­stand the habits and prac­tices of cer­tain migrant groups, bey­ond com­mon mis­con­cep­tions. “Migrants are pro­fi­cient in com­mu­nic­a­tion tools. If there is a divide, it lies in nav­ig­at­ing admin­is­trat­ive plat­forms. Fur­ther­more, one of their pri­or­it­ies when trav­el­ling to anoth­er coun­try is to buy a phone. They often have sev­er­al, which are both vital tools and aids to integ­ra­tion.” As the research­er points out, “what is inter­est­ing about digit­al soci­ology is that we don’t work on what people say, but on what they do.” This idea is well illus­trated by a study co-authored by the research­er and pub­lished in 2010⁴.

The work under­mines the pre­con­cep­tion that most migrants trans­fer money primar­ily to their fam­il­ies, and shows instead that they most often want to retain con­trol over their fin­an­cial trans­fers. “When we exam­ine migrants’ data in detail, we see that they primar­ily send money to them­selves. When we dig deep­er through qual­it­at­ive inter­views, they explain that they send money to them­selves to main­tain a form of pres­ence in their coun­try, but also to par­ti­cip­ate in activ­it­ies from a dis­tance, without giv­ing oth­ers power over their money.”

There is a gap in the research, namely the fail­ure to take into account the emo­tions of the hosts.

In 2015, the Singa asso­ci­ation cre­ated Calm, a plat­form for con­nect­ing refugees with indi­vidu­als will­ing to wel­come them into their homes⁵. Research based on this plat­form has shed light on expres­sions of hos­pit­al­ity online and the role of digit­al tools in wel­com­ing migrants. How­ever, Dana Dimin­es­cu stresses the import­ance of remain­ing attent­ive to the emo­tions of those who wel­come migrants, which are often over­shad­owed by the abund­ance of data col­lec­ted. “I was very moved work­ing on the data from the SINGA plat­form, which I saw come into being and evolve. We col­lec­ted 20,000 mes­sages and regis­tra­tions from French people who wanted to offer shel­ter or a home to refugees.” This study there­fore revealed a short­com­ing, namely the fail­ure to take into account the emo­tions of those provid­ing shel­ter in the research. “The French people said why they wanted to host, and each had a story, some­times a really mov­ing one. It can be a shame to bury emo­tion under too much digit­al technology.”

In this regard, the research­er co-signed with artist Filipê Vilas-Boas an artist­ic work installed at the Nation­al Museum of Immig­ra­tion His­tory since June 2023 and cre­ated by Mick­aël Bouh­i­er⁶. When vis­it­ors hold out their hands in front of the art­work, one of the 12,000 mes­sages of hos­pit­al­ity from French people explain­ing why they wanted to host refugees via the CALM plat­form is dis­played in the palms of their hands.

In con­clu­sion, digit­al tech­no­logy is trans­form­ing migra­tion. It offers oppor­tun­it­ies for com­mu­nic­a­tion and mutu­al sup­port but also makes people more vul­ner­able to con­trol and track­ing. The rise of AI in our soci­ety also raises new ques­tions. As the research­er points out, it spreads a lot of fake news and rein­forces com­munity bubbles. More broadly, the research­er is study­ing the influ­ence of social media on immig­rants’ return to their coun­tries. “They some­times devel­op a uto­pi­an nar­rat­ive of return, a little nos­tal­gic, a little hero­ic, anti-migra­tion pro­ject of their par­ents.” How­ever, “we do not yet know what AI will bring in terms of know-how and prac­tices in gen­er­al,” she adds. In any case, one thing is cer­tain: migra­tion is now insep­ar­able from digit­al technology.

Lucille Caliman