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