The Migration and Technology Monitor and Heinrich Böll Foundation are hosting a Nairobi gathering to bridge divides, share research, and shape policy. Half the attendees are Global North scholars; half are MTM Fellows with lived migration or occupation experience.
There is a flip side to digital technology’s capacity for global connection. Governments, particularly those in the Global North, are deploying cutting-edge surveillance technologies to drive border externalization while AI is now helping to make decisions about who is in or out. Researchers and journalists around the world are trying to better understand and explain the impacts of digitalized borders. In a time of heightened xenophobia, researching opaque border policies has become even more difficult.
The Migration and Technology Monitor (MTM) and Heinrich Böll Foundation are organizing a gathering in Nairobi, Kenya to find allies where other people see enemies. Attendees will share their research, build networks, and develop policy principles. Half of those attending are renowned researchers from the Global North. The other half are professionals with lived experiences of migration or occupation who have participated in the MTM Fellowship, a unique program that empowers people affected by migration to talk, instead of just being the subject of discussions.
The fellows receive a stipend of 30,000 US Dollars for a year, supporting projects on the threshold of migration and technology. “When we started the MTM Fellowship, we tried to build global cohorts comprised of a few people working on cutting edge issues, supporting them with proper stipends instead of smaller amounts of money. Of course, we could have had 30 fellows, but instead, we treat and pay our fellows as colleagues, not as beneficiaries,” Petra Molnar, director of the MTM explains.
During the gathering in Kenya, the participants will address the ways technology intersects with issues of exploitation, surveillance, warfare, and borders, as well as asylum. In addressing the range of issues, the participants will be able to formulate recommendations regarding the use of technology in the migration space. But not only that. The core idea is for people working on these issues from around the world will have the chance to meet and connect. “Meaningful participation is at the heart of what we do at the MTM. And our colleagues-on-the-move are exactly that – colleagues with lived experience who are experts in their own right. The Global North has so much to learn from the insights, the experiences, and the professional input of people in the Majority World, as well as the solutions that they propose,” Molnar underlines.
New connections will rise out of the conference that will broaden the view of all participants, bring up angles that might have been forgotten, and make sure that the ‘human experience’ is not forgotten while discussing algorithms, predictive policing, or systems of automated decision making. “The way that technology affects people in the migration sector is hardly acknowledged. But it’s crucial and should be taken into account when developing, deploying or promoting technology,” Molnar demands.
Policymakers, particularly those in Europe and North America, have also lost sight of the how their decisions reverberate – at home and abroad. Most directly, funding cuts for global development and climate resilience will lead to more migration. The immense funding for the new technology systems focused on migration means redirecting funds that could instead support communities and economic transformation and address the root causes of forced displacement.
The gathering is the start of a global conversation. It's not by coincidence that this first conversation will take place in Nairobi. Kenya plays a strategic role in migration as the home to a number of global organizations working on refugee and migration. There are large diaspora communities from East Africa with many drawn to Kenya for jobs in tech. Practically, participants with Syrian, Sudanese or Palestinian passports would find it extremely difficult or impossible to travel to Europe or the US. But they are essential voices and experts with lived experience. Conversations on the human impacts of border technologies have to be reshaped, including the geographies in which they are held, to ensure that interventions in policy and public debates are shaped by those who have directly experienced the ways that technology is reshaping global movement.