Doing refugee rights with technologies? On the increased digitisation of refugee management, in and beyond Middle Eastern protection contexts

Welcome to our hybrid Tuesday coffee seminar with presentation by Dr. Mirjam Twigt, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Criminology and Sociology of Law (IKRS), University of Oslo! 

The topic

What can the increased digitisation of legal and bureaucratic procedures that are part and parcel of refugee management mean for people seeking refuge? In this talk, Mirjam Twigt zooms in on two states in the Middle Eastern region that are hosting large refugee populations, despite being non-signatory to the Refugee Convention: Jordan and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Largely funded by western states and/or through private partnerships, refugee governance in and beyond these locations is increasingly data driven. This has raised many concerns. Suggestions to counter this movement – for instance through more inclusive ´legal tech´ or proposals to deploy algorithms for refugee status determination purposes – tend to negate the politico-economic realities that refugees and the people seeking to aid them find themselves in. As digital traces and inscriptions often fixate the very structural inequalities that legal aid seeks to address, the question is: are there practical potentials for digitalising legal assistance that safeguard the present and future rights of people seeking refuge?
 
Bildet kan inneholde: flaske, vannflaske, bord, flaskevann, mineralvann.
Mirjam Twigt is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Criminology and Sociology of Law (IKRS). For the REF-ARAB project – funded for by the Norwegian Research Council – she explores refugee legal aid practices in the Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRI). She has been working on digital connectivity and forced migration in Jordan and Iraq for the last 10 years. Her monograph´Mediated Lives – Waiting and Hope among Iraqi refugees in Jordan´ was published by Berghahn Books in January 2022.
 

Registration for digital participation.

Contact person: Øystein Flø Baste
 

Publisert 4. mai 2022 09:33 - Sist endret 4. mai 2022 12:39