Proceedings of the Weizenbaum Conference 2023: AI, Big Data, Social Media, and People on the Move

The conference focused on topics that arise from artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data deployed on and used by 'people on the move'. We understand the term 'people on the move' in a broad sense: individuals and groups who - by volition or necessity - are changing their lives and/or their structural position in societies. This encompasses the role of automated systems or AI in different forms of geographical and social change, including migration and labour mobility, algorithmic uses of 'location', as well as discourses of and about people on the move

Border Harms and Everyday Violence. The Lived Experiences of Border Crossers in Lesvos Island, Greece

In 2015, Lesvos a Greek Island located at the North-Eastern edge of the Aegean Sea at the borders with Turkey became an important gate for border crossers who were fleeing persecution, wars, conflicts, authoritarian regimes and violence. During 2015 over 800,000 border crossers arrived via the Aegean Sea and Turkey into Greece and out of them approximately 500,000 arrived via Lesvos. Lesvos suddenly became the epicentre of what is predominantly referred to as the refugee crisis. The overwhelming arrivals of people seeking international protection and the mainstream discourses by the media and policy makers created a theatrical border spectacle full of suffering, misery and death. Although, Greece and Lesvos has been an important gate for unauthorised border crossers since the 1990s, it was only after the death of Alan Kurdi –a Syrian border crosser child, whose body was washed ashore at Turkey’s coast- that shocked and sensitised the public opinion and the EU policy makers. Even though policy makers expressed their “deep concerns” for the increased death toll of border crossers, in the name of protection of human lives and public order enforced a strengthened militarised thanatopolitical border regime. This thesis is an ethnographic study which explores the multiple, multilayered border-related harms and everyday violence border crossers experience while seeking sanctuary in Europe. Having Lesvos as a case study this research aims to document the collateral casualties in human cost of the monolithic and cruel EU border regime and the politics of deterrence. The rationale of the thesis rests on the idea that violence, abjection, spatial and temporal confinements, stuckedness and deaths border crossers experience in Lesvos, and other EU countries are neither random, unforeseen, unpreventable “tragic” events nor accidents; they are instead an outcome of the continuum of multiple political decisions being enforced in time and space since the 1985 Schengen Agreement. By deploying ethnography with auto-ethnographical evocative narratives in the form of Vignettes this thesis examines the continuum of violence in time and space and its harmful long-term impacts upon border crossers’ lives

Silenced Bodies: (En)Gendering Syrian Refugee Insecurity in Lebanon

While there has been a shift in security studies from the security of states to that of people, realpolitik still takes place under the banner of an emerging discourse of ‘refugee crisis.’ Refugee insecurities are (en)gendered and experienced where their depth and breadth pose significant challenges to asylum seekers, neighboring host-states, and humanitarian agencies. To this end, this research captures the unique dynamics of a South-South refugee crisis in Lebanon, in which Syrians residents make up nearly one-third of its population. It applies a transnational feminist framework to trace how refugee security norms get defined, are managed, and how they impact local context. In effect, a gender lens enables an in-depth investigation of the day-to-day challenges Syrian refugee women experience and manage within an unreceptive environment that disproportionately affect their resilience efforts. Located at the intersection of Security Studies and Refugee scholarship, this dissertation provides a much-needed feminist approach that can bridge the tension between two paradigms previously perceived as exclusionary when exploring a transnational phenomenon such as forced migration. In a refugee-security context, an interdisciplinary study sheds light on how impromptu choices made by involved bodies—such as the Lebanese government and the UNHCR—can significantly impact local realities, creating a vicious cycle of refugee insecurities. This research, thus, addresses the political, socio-cultural, and organizational dynamics that disproportionately affect the majority of registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon: Syrian women. It utilizes several tools, including expert interviews, in-depth longitudinal cultural-theme analysis, and an action-oriented participatory method called Photovoice. These tools help this research explore the multi-layeredness of Syrian refugee (in)security in Lebanon with structural and gendered implications. Hence, this study adds to the critical knowledge from Security Studies, Refugee Protection Regimes, and Women’s and Gender Studies, serving as a useful tool for future projects on the contested politics of refugee (in)security and gender practices

Telling stories, re-imagining lives: An inter-disciplinary examination of arts-based methods & life-stories as a vehicle for self-expression among refugees & asylum seekers.

As news stories around the ‘refugee crisis’ permeated the British social imagination in a Brexit vote era, new questions around notions of belonging, borders, and (im)migration emerged. Refugees and asylum seekers, now more than ever, are represented in accordance to dominant narratives and in a variety of visual forms through news media, advocacy campaigns, films, and popular culture, amongst other means. Despite their hyper-visibility, stories of those seeking asylum are more often told about them by others rather than by those seeking asylum themselves. Asylum-seeking stories emerge within a matrix of power relations responding to different narrative landscapes, expectations, and audiences. Within the current ‘hostile environment’ in the United Kingdom (UK) and across Europe, the need to tell stories in a ‘safe’ space becomes imperative. Through combining biographical work with arts-based methodologies, the project adopts an ethno-mimetic methodological framework that facilitated the production, exchange, and creative re-interpretation of stories of living in exile. An 18-month fieldwork period, involving life story interviews, creative sessions and photo-elicitation discussions, yields the data on which this study is based. Drawing on symbolic interactionism and social constructionism theories, this research examines how individuals seeking asylum (re)present themselves through their stories and explores how such experiences are negotiated by participants in an attempt to respond to the expectations of the ‘good refugee’. Through an exploration of interviewees’ journeys (physical, legal and resettlement), this study reveals the enduring impact of immigration policies on individuals seeking asylum in the UK. More importantly, it identifies a particular sociopolitical moment that is defined by increased hostility, punitive policies, and disbelief, as well as legal, cultural, and narrative expectations over asylum seekers’ ‘deservingness’. This thesis argues that an arts-based approach to research can transform individuals’ lives by allowing them to participate meaningfully in the production of knowledge; by feeding their creativity and existing storytelling skills into the research process; and by initiating a safe space for participants to tell personal stories that may remain unheard as a result of the narrative expectations of the deserving/undeserving; weak/strong; grateful/ungrateful ‘refugee’ (Sales 2002; Taylor 2016; Stavropoulou 2019: 94)

Adolescents in Humanitarian Crisis

Adolescents in Humanitarian Crisis investigates the experiences of adolescents displaced by humanitarian crisis. The world is currently seeing unprecedented levels of mass displacement, and almost half of the world’s 70 million displaced people are children and adolescents under the age of 18. Displacement for adolescents comes with huge disruption to their education and employment prospects, as well as increased risks of poor psychosocial outcomes and sexual and gender-based violence for girls. Considering these intersectional vulnerabilities throughout, this book explores the experiences of adolescents from refugee, internally displaced persons and stateless communities in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Rwanda. Drawing on innovative mixed-methods research, the book investigates adolescent capabilities, including education, health and nutrition, freedom from violence and bodily integrity, psychosocial wellbeing, voice and agency, and economic empowerment. Centring the diverse voices and experiences of young people and focusing on how policy and programming can be meaningfully improved, this book will be a vital guide for humanitarian students and researchers, and for practitioners seeking to build effective, evidence-based policy

The Global Risks Report 2016, 11th Edition

Now in its 11th edition, The Global Risks Report 2016 draws attention to ways that global risks could evolve and interact in the next decade. The year 2016 marks a forceful departure from past findings, as the risks about which the Report has been warning over the past decade are starting to manifest themselves in new, sometimes unexpected ways and harm people, institutions and economies. Warming climate is likely to raise this year's temperature to 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, 60 million people, equivalent to the world's 24th largest country and largest number in recent history, are forcibly displaced, and crimes in cyberspace cost the global economy an estimated US$445 billion, higher than many economies' national incomes. In this context, the Reportcalls for action to build resilience – the "resilience imperative" – and identifies practical examples of how it could be done.The Report also steps back and explores how emerging global risks and major trends, such as climate change, the rise of cyber dependence and income and wealth disparity are impacting already-strained societies by highlighting three clusters of risks as Risks in Focus. As resilience building is helped by the ability to analyse global risks from the perspective of specific stakeholders, the Report also analyses the significance of global risks to the business community at a regional and country-level

World migration report 2018

"This volume is the result of a highly collaborative venture involving a multitude of partners and contributors under the direction of the editors. The World Migration Report 2018 project commenced in September 2016 and culminated in the launch of the report in November 2017 by the Director General at the 108th Session of the IOM Council. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of IOM. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout the report do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IOM concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning its frontiers or boundaries.

Material Culture and (Forced) Migration: Materializing the transient

Material Culture and (Forced) Migration argues that materiality is a fundamental dimension of migration. During journeys of migration, people take things with them, or they lose, find and engage things along the way. Movements themselves are framed by objects such as borders, passports, tents, camp infrastructures, boats and mobile phones. This volume brings together chapters that are based on research into a broad range of movements – from the study of forced migration and displacement to the analysis of retirement migration. What ties the chapters together is the perspective of material culture and an understanding of materiality that does not reduce objects to mere symbols. Centring on four interconnected themes – temporality and materiality, methods of object-based migration research, the affective capacities of objects, and the engagement of things in place-making practices – the volume provides a material culture perspective for migration scholars around the globe, representing disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, contemporary archaeology, curatorial studies, history and human geography. The ethnographic nature of the chapters and the focus on everyday objects and practices will appeal to all those interested in the broader conditions and tangible experiences of migration

Material Culture and (Forced) Migration

Material Culture and (Forced) Migration argues that materiality is a fundamental dimension of migration. During journeys of migration, people take things with them, or they lose, find and engage things along the way. Movements themselves are framed by objects such as borders, passports, tents, camp infrastructures, boats and mobile phones. This volume brings together chapters that are based on research into a broad range of movements – from the study of forced migration and displacement to the analysis of retirement migration. What ties the chapters together is the perspective of material culture and an understanding of materiality that does not reduce objects to mere symbols. Centring on four interconnected themes – temporality and materiality, methods of object-based migration research, the affective capacities of objects, and the engagement of things in place-making practices – the volume provides a material culture perspective for migration scholars around the globe, representing disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, contemporary archaeology, curatorial studies, history and human geography. The ethnographic nature of the chapters and the focus on everyday objects and practices will appeal to all those interested in the broader conditions and tangible experiences of migration