Reinventing the politics of knowledge production in migration studies: introduction to the special issue

Amelung, Nina; Scheel, Stephan; van Reekum, Rogier

doi:10.1080/1369183x.2024.2307766

Cited by 15 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 91 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, these knowledge practices involve a growing number of identification and surveillance technologies. What is new are not the culture of disbelief in asylum procedures, but the availability and use of information and identification technologies providing alternative means of truth production (see also the introduction to this issue on this point: Amelung, Scheel, and van Reekum 2024 ). These technologies are mostly digital devices that use migrants’ bodily features and data shadows as means to monitor and trace migrants’ movements, whereabouts, identities and bureaucratic trajectories (cf.…”

Section: A Material-semiotic Reading Of Asylum Procedures: Human-mach...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemic domination by data extraction: questioning the use of biometrics and mobile phone data analysis in asylum procedures

Scheel

2024

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In a growing number of destination countries state authorities have started to use various digital devices such as analysis of data captured from mobile phones to verify asylum seekers’ claimed country of origin. This move has prompted some critics to claim that asylum decision-making is increasingly delegated to machines. Based on fieldwork at a reception centre in Germany, this paper mobilises insights from science and technology studies (STS) to develop a framework that allows for more nuanced analyses and modes of critiques of the digitisation of asylum procedures. Rather than thinking human and non-human forms of agency as external to one another in order to juxtapose them in a zero-sum game, I comprehend the introduction of digital technologies as a reconfiguration of existing human-machine configurations. This conception highlights how the use digital technologies enables caseworkers to retain their position as an epistemic authority in asylum decision-making by assembling clues about asylum seekers’ country of origin generated by digital technologies into hard juridical evidence. Subsequently, I develop an alternative critique that focuses on epistemic implications of the digitisation of asylum procedures. I identify a particular version of data colonialism that enables epistemic domination by means of data extraction.

show abstract

Section: A Material-semiotic Reading Of Asylum Procedures: Human-mach...mentioning

confidence: 99%