Written by: Yagmur Erdogmus
Session contributions and insights by: Giuliana Speranza, Andrea
(Note: This blog post is a co-created reflection from VOICIFY’s first “Technology and Migrant Justice” Co-Creation Lab. The insights, quotes, and structural critiques presented below were generated collectively by the participants during our live session.)
While some of the participants could not join the first session, we had a fruitful discussion on where technology stands in our experiences in the EU, and how to orient the conversation on this. First and foremost, thinking and talking about technology’s place in our everyday lives invoked many other questions (Andrea) with no clear answer. From one perspective, we are being “tracked ” by some techno oligarchs and their collaborators/profiteers, but these technologies also give us crucial opportunities that might otherwise not be available. Somehow, we encounter migration and build multi-located communities through the digital world.We reach out to people across borders to come together, find social, cultural and economic opportunities and keep in touch with our loved ones. They are also helpful in facilitating everyday tasks, for example, when we need translation fast to communicate for a need. It is indeed no question the ease technologies brought to our lives in this sense. The question we think that remains, and will remain: At what cost?
We problematized this starting with the UN Human Rights video on Digital Technologies and Migration. Knowing how our personal data are often stored in “large, interoperable and insecure databases” (0:45), we discussed: “In what ways our personal data is or can be weaponized against us as migrants?”
For example, one of us (Giuli) mentioned how she is very careful now with what she shares on social media, as we live in a moment where we know such content can “trouble” our migration processes, even if we have already “legally” entered the country. We also talked about the broader repercussions of such practices in migration governance, aside from affecting the livelihoods of migrants: What happens to freedom of speech? Democratic rights? Democracy itself?
When the control of technologies are concentrated in the hands of a few through a “confluence of public administration and security industry” in migration politics (Ozkul, 2025), marking people on the move as potential criminal threats to be managed, our personal data becomes the tool for that. This does not only affect people on the move, but it depends on who you are. Even if you are an already settled citizen living in a European country since as a baby, your “identity” remains, consolidated through selective regimes of criminalization, for example, in Germany, where only dual citizens are put under scrutiny and surveillance for the removal of their citizenship (Teffera, 2025). Again, what happens to democracy then? Or, has there ever truly been a democracy, or has Europe been fooling themselves and the whole world in preaching these values?
This in turn, brought us to the very core questions of how decisions are made: how do they actually decide that they can strip someone of their citizenship when they are dual nationals? How do they repackage this lack of human rights under “democracy”? Ozkul’s (2025) “constructed objectivity” was a relevant concept in this regard, as we discussed how nothing in this world, including humans and digital technologies as products of humans, can never really be “objective”. However, objectivity claims indeed give the necessary legitimacy to the democratic logic of ruling: If you manage to package someone as a potential criminal “threat” to democracy and thus, the society, creating a moral panic, an “objective” measure (that is actually against human rights) can be easily invoked and legitimized. The state and its democratic logics are consolidated in defining what is objective and thus the right, or the “rational” measure in managing people. Technology, with its various automated and standardized tools helps this consolidation of state power, but silently and implicitly: we do not really see nor have access to ask accountability from decision-makers of these technologies surveilling our lives under “objective” measures.
The relevance of the objectivity myth became very much interconnected here as well. In this sense, is it worthy to reflect about the so-called “objectivity” behind an algorithm. How to de-entangle and challenge the dominant discourses generated, for instance, through AI? Certainly, recognising the influence of human beliefs and interests backing and feeding technologies, which, in this case, directly influence the migration experiences. It is this myth that grounds the mainstream knowledge production, that also grounds the ways (migration) policies are decided, implemented and repackaged under democracy. It is with this motivation and passion, that we came together, not to dismantle what objectivity is, but to expose how ingrained it is in determining the possibilities of an individual’s livelihood in migration and beyond.
Teffera, A. (2025, April 3). German Proposal to Strip Citizenship Endangers Human Rights | Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/04/03/german-proposal-strip-citizenship-endangers-human-rights
*Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this blog post are entirely those of the co-authors and contributing participants. They do not necessarily reflect the official policies, positions, or views of VOICIFY or its affiliated member organizations. VOICIFY provides the Co-Creation Labs as a platform for youth with lived migration experiences to safely share their insights and shape narratives.
