Abstract

Digital migration studies refers to an emerging interdisciplinary research area concerned with the study of migration in relation to digital technologies and datafication. Contemporary migration increasingly reflects a digitally mediated state of migrant being and a digitized and datafied condition. This results from bottom-up digital practices of migrants, and top-down forms of monitoring, governing, monetizing, surveilling and coercing migrants. In this talk I address four questions to reflect on the commitments and challenges of doing digital migration studies.

I. What is digital migration? On the level of ontology I propose a relational understanding of digital migration to acknowledge migration and technological development are increasingly mutually constitutive and fundamentally inseparable.

II. What kinds of knowledge are produced about digital migration? On the level of epistemology I reflect on the position of scholars within the variety of actors that produce knowledge about migration through the digital

III. How can we produce knowledge about digital migration? On the level of methodology I address how the continuum of non-migrant-centric and migrant-centric research intersects with digital-media-centric and non-digital-media centric research respectively.

IV. How can we produce ethical and accountable knowledge about digital migration? I will reflect on promises and pitfalls of accountable knowledge production with and for migrant communities, realizing that researching migration poses several serious ethical challenges, which may be further compounded in digital contexts.

Bio

Koen Leurs is Associate Professor in Gender, Media and Migration Studies at the Graduate Gender Program, Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Currently, Leurs is PI of the Team Science project ‘Co-designing a fair digital asylum system’, funded by the Digital Society and COMMIT, a public-private ICT research community (2022-2023). He chairs the Utrecht University wide Digital Migration Special Interest Group, part of the Governing the digital society focus area. He previously co-edited the Handbook of Media and Migration (Sage, 2020) and the special issues (Im)mobile entanglements (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2023) and Inclusive media education for diverse societies (Media & Communication, 2022). He has published Digital Passages. Migrant youth 2.0. Diaspora, Gender & Youth Cultural Intersections (Amsterdam University Press, 2015). His latest book is Digital Migration (Sage, 2023). 

Read more on the Utrecht University website.