“Internet is the same like food” – An empirical study on the use of digital media by unaccompanied minor refugees in Germany

Participation & (Re)settlement : envisioning mobile services with young forced migrants

“…One of the main "turning points" for the recent forced migration has been the extensive use of digital technologies, and in particular of smartphones (Gillespie, Osseiran, et al, 2018;Kaufmann, 2018;Kutscher and Kreß, 2016). Digital technologies and services have a great potential to ease (re)settlement of forcibly displaced population in several ways (Kaufmann, 2018;Brunwasser, 2015;Kutscher and Kreß, 2016;BenEzer and Zetter, 2014;Andrade and Doolin, 2016;Kennan et al, 2011). They can, for example, ease social connectivity (AbuJarour and Krasnova, 2017;Yerousis et al, 2015;Aal et al, 2014), favor communication by facilitating translation (D. Brown and Grinter, 2016), provide local information needed for daily life in the new city (Schreieck et al, 2017), and aid with language learning (Ngan et al, 2016;Hashemi et al, 2017).…”

“…D. Brown and Grinter, 2016;Andrade and Doolin, 2016;Kutscher and Kreß, 2016;Baranoff et al, 2015;Lloyd et al, 2013;Kennan et al, 2011;Caidi, Allard, and Quirke, 2010;Caidi and Allard, 2005). We defined seven categories (language, information, functional literacy, technology experience, forced migrants ask for..., information communication preferences, and information sharing) for the codes, which we clustered into three main themes: challenges, needs, and strategies for information sharing during the (re)settlement.…”

“…First, we found forced migrants needs which refers to aspects they require to have a better and more effective process of arrival and (re)settlement. The codes learning local language, accessing formal education, offline services, and social interaction with local community assigned to this category were defined deductively from prior research (Andrade and Doolin, 2016;Bin Morshed et al, 2017;Kutscher and Kreß, 2016;Caidi, Allard, and Quirke, 2010;Danso, 2002;Donnelly, 2000). Additional codes such as having translators at the beginning, and other services, emerged from the interviews.…”

“…The main research question of this second study was "how do existing mobile services address the challenges and needs identified by forced migrants during the interviews?". Previous work (e.g., (AbuJarour and Krasnova, 2017;Schreieck et al, 2017;Andrade and Doolin, 2016;Gillespie, Ampofo, et al, 2016;Kutscher and Kreß, 2016;Rohde et al, 2016;Xu and Maitland, 2016)) has pointed out that mobile phones, particularly smartphones, are one of the main sources for forced migrants to access, manage and communicate information. Former studies have done specific evaluations of single services created for forced migrants (e.g., Integreat, Moin).…”

“…Technology already plays an important role for forced migrants especially for communication purposes, as well as a tool for finding information in different situations during their journey, e.g., displacement, arrival, social integration (Brunwasser, 2015;Kutscher and Kreß, 2016;BenEzer and Zetter, 2014;Andrade and Doolin, 2016;Kennan et al, 2011). However, accessing and understanding the information in the host country often require skills which can be beyond the forced migrants' proficiency of the local language, and occasionally, their literacy competency (Lloyd et al, 2013).…”