Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders (for Raymond Rhine) by Louis Everuss

Author:Louis Everuss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2024-08-05T18:21:38.540000+00:00

Digital technologies as essential tools of travel

As indicated above, the technology that is most frequently studied as a digital migration tool is the mobile smart phone (Alencar, 2020; Dekker et al., 2018; Mezzadra, 2017; Noori, 2022a). Smart phones are small and portable computers that, in addition to standard telecommunication functionality, provide the necessary hardware and interface for a wide array of travel related applications. Smart phones have attracted significant scholarly interest because they have become almost omnipresent in international travel, including for example, enforced migration. Indeed, 95 percent of the Syrian and Iraqi refugees who entered Europe in 2015 relied on a smart phone at some point during their journey (Gough & Gough, 2019, p. 90). And the usage of smart phones does not end when enforced migrants reach a destination as they are used to navigate foreign settings. Back in 2016, the UNHCR estimated that ‘68 % of refugees living in urban centers have access to an internet-enabled phone, with the vast majority prioritizing mobile ownership and connectivity as crucial for their safety’ (Alencar, 2020, p. 2).

While mobile phones are used for many important travel purposes, for enforced migrants it is still their capacity to enable communication with other migrants and migrant ‘helpers’ that is of the most significance (Borkert et al., 2018). This communication increasingly occurs through data networks and VoIP services like Skype or Viber (Dekker et al., 2018), or via text and multimedia messaging on social media sites and encrypted messaging apps (Borkert et al., 2018; Dekker et al., 2018). Max Schuab (2012, p. 126) found that trans-Saharan migrants use such forms of communication to ‘draw on the unprecedented accessibility of contacts equipped with mobile phones to tie together novel, geographically expansive networks’.

Another important feature of smartphones for enforced migrations is the capabilities they offer to research journeys and destinations. In a survey ascertaining the information needs of Syrian refugees, Borkert et al. (2018, p. 6) found that migrants used technology to ascertain the well-being of family in their home country, to obtain news about their country of origin, to learn new languages, and study the culture of their destination country. The information provided by smart phone usage is not just used for planning purposes, but also real time and reflexive actions and decision making. For example, GPS capabilities and mapping applications are employed by enforced migrants to navigate and to request assistance (Jones et al., 2017, p. 5). Simon Noori (2022a) has found that the ability to read GPS coordinates off a smart phone played a pivotal role for migrants crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece in 2015 by enabling them to request assistance from coastguard authorities and refugee advocates. Other research suggests mobile mapping applications increase the mobility of Afghan, Iranian, and Syrian refugees, who see mapping apps as essential phone-based tools (Alencar, 2020).

There is thus a diverse range of ways that enforced migrants use smart phones that has led this technology to become, in Marie Gillespie et al.’s words (2018, p. 1), ‘lifelines, as important as water and food.

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