A/Prof Derya Ozkul, Senior citizen Research Associates, Refugee Studies Centre, College or university of Oxford
Increasingly, technologies and methods are being used to streamline asylum procedures. These range from biometric matching applications that determine iris runs and fingerprints to directories for refugees and asylum seekers to chatbots to help people signup protection cases. These tools are designed to make that easier just for states and agencies to process asylum applications, especially as much systems are slowed down because of the COVID-19 outbreak and raising levels of pressured displacement.
Nevertheless they raise a host of human privileges concerns. Like for example , privacy worries, opaque decision-making, and the potential for biases or equipment errors which may lead to discriminatory outcomes. They also pose significant complications to migrant workers and refugees, who can be already voiceless and somewhat insecure.
Ozkul’s research explores many ways in which fresh technologies may be used to verify identities and narratives of migrant workers, allowing them to improve their asylum application process. It also looks at the ways by which these technology can create a specific informational space around migrants, and how they configure the subjecthood. Pursuing Foucault, your woman argues that such methods are both comarcal and institutional. For example , eye scanning algorithms can be seen mainly because an institutional technology, because they require the migrant to enter a specific terrain in order to be recognized; while suggestion algorithms are industrial and global in their effects, configuring topics as customers.
As a result, they will enact a certain form of hegemonic power over displaced persons. This is especially true given the current competition to the bottom level in asylum policy ~ with some countries offering bonuses like the Nansen passport to help in cachette resettling and others imposing restrictive guidelines Read More Here that block all their access to terrain and push them into dangerous and deadly journeys.