The information practices and politics of migrant-aid work in the US-Mexico borderlands

Coordinating Migration: Caring for Communities & Their Data

“…There is strong evidence of the contested use of migrants' data at and between borders, whether for humanitarian aid, or other purposes such as immigration policy enforcement [32,35]. This work suggests that rapid and unchecked experimentation with immigration data is already a norm across different countries.…”

Surveillance as information practice

“…Other studies also recognize how surveillance can inform or influence information practices. For example, Newell et al (2020) investigated the how information politics informed the “liminal information practices” of migrant‐aid workers serving undocumented/irregular migrants in the US‐Mexico borderlands—including surveillance practices and “decisions about what information to collect and what information to share (and with whom)” (p. 210). Caidi and MacDonald (2008) explored of how Muslim‐Canadians’ information practices were impacted following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, finding that “being a member of a community that they perceive to be under attack or under surveillance … results in their heightened awareness about information and media consumption” (p. 368).…”

“…Much of this scholarship focuses on the social aspects of surveillance and privacy or the ethical, policy, and regulatory issues implicated by surveillance. For example, information scholars have examined the social aspects of surveillance in the contexts of mobile contact tracing (Fox et al, 2022), public acceptance of government surveillance (Thompson et al, 2020), workplaces and employment (Stark et al, 2020), online privacy (Quan‐Haase & Ho, 2020), immigration (Newell et al, 2016, 2017; Newell et al, 2020), everyday use of digital and social media (Abokhodair et al, 2017; Stark, 2016; Vieweg & Hodges, 2016), institutional use of mobile and location‐based services (Shklovski et al, 2015), and smart city projects (Kashef et al, 2021). Information scholars have also offered critical perspectives on surveillance (e.g., Mann et al, 2020; Paris et al, 2022).…”

Information Borderlands in the U.S. Southwest

“…Research that focuses on these social actors specifically in the borderlands is rare in information research. A few exceptions include, the information practices of migrant‐aid workers (Newell et al, 2020) and information seeking and technology use of border crossers (Newell et al, 2016), and the information practices of law enforcement, more generally, in contexts outside of the borderlands, but studied in relation to local sanctuary laws (Tian et al, 2021). Areas of information research related to the information practices of transnational migrants more generally include studies on the information practices of immigrants (Caidi et al, 2008, 2010), refugees and forced migrants (Lloyd, 2017), and information practices of immigrants settling in cities (Allard, 2021; Lingel, 2011; Shuva, 2018).…”

“…Fourth, the ethics of border technologies and the role played by data policies in migrant deaths and intrusive documentary regimes can be studied by researchers in information ethics, critical data studies, and infrastructure studies. There is already growing interest in this area, e.g., the ethics of border technologies (Hendow et al, 2015); data governance across borders (Metcalfe & Dencik, 2019); algorithms, AI, automation, and ethics of border enforcement (Hendow et al, 2015;Lara, 2022;Sánchez-Monedero & Dencik, 2022); the data privacy of migrants (Vannini et al, 2020); and experiences of surveillance (Newell et al, 2017). Applying these approaches to borderlands research will provide an important perspective on how data are collected and used by governments to establish regions of data hegemony, power and control.…”