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The Role of Information and Communication Technology in the EU Response to the 2015 Refugee Crisis
Abstract
The 2015 refugee crisis – as the mass influx of migrants from the Middle East is commonly dubbed – tested the European Union’s ability to react to large-scale humanitarian emergencies. Apart from various organizational, social and political changes that the 2015 refugee crisis has brought to the European Union, it has also marked the growing role of information and communication technology (ICT) in the EU’s asylum and migration policies. Drawing from the critical perspective of international relations and such concepts as securitization of migration, the paper aims to analyse the engagement of ICT by EU institutions and individual Member States during the refugee crisis in 2015.
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Building on the results of a qualitative study with 16 male refugees (mostly from Syria)
settled in the Netherlands, this article reports on an investigation that applied insights from
the Uses & Gratifications (U&G) framework and refugee studies to examine the media use of
refugees, and to link these to the material, social and psychological needs emerging from the journey. With a focus on the smartphone, our study distinguished four significant clusters of media uses and gratifications among the sampling population: smartphone as companion, an organizational hub, a lifeline, and diversion. First, the use of smartphones was linked to refugees’ need to contact family, friends and connect with migrant communities. The importance of establishing contact with other refugees and smugglers through smartphones reinforces the agency of these migration networks within mobility processes. The findings also point to refugees’ smartphone usage for getting a sense of security. Finally, this study demonstrated the use of smartphones for preserving memories of the journey through the storage of pictures taken of important moments experienced during the flight. Additional studies should include other methodologies and samples to further validate our theoretical framework and findings.
Social media are increasingly popular channels of information on which migrants base their decisions on whether to migrate and the destinations where to settle. While social media offer a relatively cheap, easily accessible, and media-rich means of communication, their use is not without challenges for asylum migrants. Various studies describe issues with access and evaluation of the truthfulness of available information for this specific group of migrants. This article discusses social media use by asylum migrants prior to and during migration. This study is based on in-depth interviews with 54 Syrian asylum migrants who recently obtained refugee status in the Netherlands. Syrians were the largest group of migrants applying for asylum in European Union (EU) member states in 2015 and 2016. The findings show that the majority of Syrian asylum migrants have access to social media information before and during migration, often through the use of smartphones. Besides uneven access to technologies, fear of government surveillance restricts the smartphone use of asylum migrants. The results of this study indicate that Syrian asylum migrants prefer social media information that originates from existing social ties and information that is based on personal experiences. Generally, this information is considered more trustworthy. Asylum migrants use various strategies to validate rumors that are present on social media and come from unknown sources. These strategies include checking the source of information, validating information with trusted social ties, triangulation of online sources, and comparing information with their own experience.
Crises are complex phenomena, whereby a long-term situation produces short-term
but extremely alerting incidents. Such a crisis is caused by the wave of Middle Eastern refugees and immigrants, attempting to find refuge in European countries. This crisis exhibits an obvious humanitarian component, but also severely adverse environmental effects. A systematic crisis and disaster management process that involves big data analytics with principal goal to minimize the negative impact or consequences of crises and disasters, thus protecting societal and natural environment. Green IT engineering principles are here translated as a need to analyze data in order to detect early warnings of evolving environmental effects. Big Data analytics in the context of crisis management involves efficient solutions in four fundamental aspects of the related technology: Data Volume, measuring the amount of data available, with typical data sets occupying many terabytes. Data velocity is a measure of the rate of data creation, streaming and aggregation. Data variety is a measure of the heterogeneity of data sources, together with the richness of data representation—text, images, videos etc. Data value, measures the usefulness of data in making decisions. This chapter aims to present appropriate solutions in all aspects of distributed data analysis of social media data, so as to define the enabling technologies for high performance decision support for the purpose of crisis management. The presentation will include both existing and innovative appropriate technologies and existing state of the art systems and will aim to propose the advantages and disadvantages of different possibilities for alternative integrated solutions. Additionally, sources of data related to the Syrian refugee crisis are identified in the context of the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter with effects in both the humanitarian and the environmental fronts.
This chapter explores the power of the future in contemporary security thinking. The contemporary moment is marked by the amplification of amorphous processes of (in)securitisation that traverse institutional and organisational boundaries. The problematisation of migration, crime and security in Europe has led to the rise of new techno-scientific assemblages, new forms of expertise, and new engagements with the milieu that is the near, but deep, future. In this chapter, I pay particular attention to foresight and scenarios as ways through which to explore how security and migration is now perceived and conceived by experts. My concern is to explore the stories about the future told by experts and the ways in which those stories elicit preemptive actions.
n this paper the emergence of the digital borders in the EU is analyzed. Alt- hough borders have always been the spaces where individuals are sorted from each other, the database technologies extend this process of sorting to every- where within the EU. The developments in the database and biometrics technology have made it possible to identify people automatically and to reach their records even long after they have entered the EU. Digitization and diffusion of the borders will affect the already disadvantaged segments of the population, such as undocumented migrants, asylum seekers and ordinary travellers, in a negative way. These categories are now put under continual surveillance as if they are potential criminals or terrorists. Yet, the diffusion of the borders with digital technologies should not mean that the localized controls at the external borders have lost their significance. In fact, with the EUROSUR, now the territorial controls have also intensified. The EUROSUR will survey the external EU borders with sophisticated surveillance systems, including manned and un- manned aerial vehicles and satellites, in order prevent irregular migrants from reaching the EU.
This paper is divided into three main sections. In the discussion that follows, the paper draws on the surveillance and border studies literature to develop a con- ceptual framework for understanding the digital borders. Second, the paper ex- amines the new EU surveillance mechanisms in detail and their effects on dif- ferent groups. The final section concludes by summarizing the arguments of the paper and discussing the consequences of digital sorting on European citizenship.
Postcolonial Encounters in International Relations examines the social and cultural aspects of the political violence that underpinned the French colonial project in the Maghreb, and the multi-layered postcolonial realities that ensued.
This book explores the reality of the lives of North African migrants in postcolonial France, with a particular focus on their access to political entitlements such as citizenship and rights. This reality is complicated even further by complex practices of memory undertaken by Franco-Maghrebian intellectuals, who negotiate, in their writings, between the violent memory of the French colonial project in the Maghreb, and the contemporary conundrums of postcolonial migration.
The book pursues thus the politics of (post)colonial memory by tracing its representations in literary, political, and visual narratives belonging to various Franco-Maghrebian intellectuals, who see themselves as living and writing between France and the Maghreb. By adopting a postcolonial perspective, a perspective quite marginal in International Relations, the book investigates a different international relations, which emerges via narratives of migration. A postcolonial standpoint is instrumental in understanding the relations between class, gender, and race, which interrogate and reflect more generally on the shared (post)colonial violence between North Africa and France, and on the politics of mediating violence through complex practices of memory.
In an era of transboundary crises, Europe faces the daunting challenge of coordinating joint responses in an effective and timely way. Recent transboundary crises such as the Icelandic Ash Cloud (2010), food contamination incidents and the financial breakdown revealed a key part of that challenge: sifting through relevant information, building an accurate picture of what is happening, and communicating that analysis to political decision-makers. Academic researchers refer to this process in terms of 'sense-making'. To create joint capa-city for sense-making is one of the prominent elements of the EU's ambitions to play a role in the management of transboundary crises. The number of early-warning, rapid-alert, and common communi-cation platforms in the EU has multiplied in recent years but with little central guidance or overall rationale. This report tries to 'make sense of sense-making' tools in the EU by providing the most comprehensive overview to date. We ask what sense-making tools are available at the EU level, document what they are intended to do, and explore what these tools offer in terms of 'added-value' to European states. Using official documents, secon-dary literature and interviews with policy officials, this report maps the sense-making landscape of the EU. After drawing out key pat-terns and offering an inventory of tools relevant to sense-making, we conclude by discussing the problems and prospects of the EU's role.
Long and dangerous ‘fragmented journeys’ have become a common feature of global migration systems. These are more than simple
responses to stricter migration controls and are associated with related developments in technology and communications. They
are therefore a structural change in migration systems which require a re-examination of the ways in which protection is offered
to migrants. This has become an important theme of international discussion since 2005 but the humanitarian situation of international
migrants on particular routes remains of concern to aid groups and many in the international community. This paper, based
on research in Morocco, considers the protection needs of three groups of ‘stranded’ migrants: yet to be recognized refugees,
previously recognized refugees and those with other protection needs. It examines migration histories to identify reasons
why this third group of individuals may be unable or unwilling to return and the nature of humanitarian assistance they require.
In Continent by Default, Anne Marie Le Gloannec, a distinguished analyst of contemporary Europe, considers the European Union as a geopolitical project. This book offers a comprehensive narrative of how the European Union came to organize the continent, first by default through enlargement and in a more proactive, innovative, but not always successful way. The EU was not conceived as a foreign-policy actor, she says, and the Union was an innocent on questions of geopolitics. For readers who may wonder how the EU arrived at Brexit, the invasion of Ukraine, and the refugee crisis, Le Gloannec ties events to the EU's long-term failure to think in politically strategic terms.Le Gloannec takes readers through the process by which, under the security umbrella of the United States, the European Commission engineered a new way for states and societies to interact. Continent by Default shows the Commission domesticated international relations and promoted peace by including new members-enlargement was the most significant tool the EU used from its inception to organize the continent, but the EU also tied itself to its regional neighbors through various programs that too often gave those neighbors the advantage. As Continent by Default makes clear, the EU cannot devise strategy because foreign policy remains the privilege of national governments. It is a geopolitical actor without geopolitical means.
Uninformed and reactionary responses in the years following the events of 9/11 and the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ have greatly affected ideas of citizenship and national belonging. In Securitized Citizens, Baljit Nagra, develops a new critical analysis of the ideas dominant groups and institutions try to impose on young Canadian Muslims and how in turn they contest and reconceptualize these ideas. Nagra conducted fifty in-depth interviews with young Muslim adults in Vancouver and Toronto and her analysis reveals how this group experienced national belonging and exclusion in light of the Muslim ‘other’, how they reconsidered their cultural and religious identity, and what their experiences tell us about contemporary Canadian citizenship. The rich and lively interviews in Securitized Citizens successfully capture the experiences and feelings of well-educated, second-generation, and young Canadian Muslims. Nagra acutely explores how racial discourses in a post-9/11 world have affected questions of race relations, religious identity, nationalism, white privilege, and multiculturalism.
The role of smuggling in forced migration has been a leading policy challenge of the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East. This study investigates how anti-smuggling government policies have shaped migratory risks for Syrian refugees in five countries: Jordan, Turkey, Greece, Serbia and Germany. Original evidence from in-depth interviews (n=123), surveys (n=100), expert interviews (n=75) and ethnography reveal that government anti-smuggler policies have: (a) endangered Syrian refugees by shifting risk from smugglers to their clients; (b) distorted refugees' perceptions of risk, and; (c) decreased refugees' confidence in government representatives while increasing dependence on smugglers. These data are unique in scope and topic, expanding the existing literature with an emphasis on understudied experiences during migration. The paper concludes with a policy recommendation that acknowledges the reality of smugglers' role in forced migrants' decisions, offering a pragmatic alternative of strategic pre-emption of smugglers.
This article attempts to explain how mobile phones influence how Sri Lankan Tamil refugees perceive cultural, psychological, and physical borders. Grounded in the information and communications technology (ICT) literature and diaspora communications, the lead author conducted twelve in-depth interviews with Mandapam camp residents in Tamilnadu, India, during Summer 2013. Results indicate that while camp refugees considered Sri Lanka their “motherland,” fear of government surveillance coupled with skepticism regarding the peace process impedes their return, even though official hostilities have ceased. However, mobile communications allow them to create a virtual community, which is important because camp life essentially separates them from both India and Sri Lanka.
The book critically engages with theoretical developments in international relations and security studies to develop a fresh conceptual framework for studying security.Contents 1. Politics of insecurity, technology and the political2. Security framing: the question of the meaning of security3. Displacing the spectre of the state in security studies: From referent objects to techniques of government4. Securitizing migration: Freedom from existential threats and the constitution of insecure communities5. European integration and societal insecurity6. Freedom and security in the EU: A Foucaultian view on spill-over7. Migration, securitization and the question of political community in the EU8. De-securitizing migration: Security knowledge and concepts of the political9. Conclusion: the politics of framing insecurity
Humanised accounts of restrictions on mobility are rarely the focus of debates on irregular migration. Very little is heard from refugees themselves about why they migrate, their experiences whilst entering the EU or how they navigate reception conditions upon arrival, particularly from a gendered perspective. The Securitization of Migration and Refugee Women fills this gap and explores the journey made by refugee women who have travelled from Somalia to the EU to seek asylum. This book reveals the humanised impact of the securitization of migration, the dominant policy response to irregular migration pursued by governments across the Globe. The Southern EU Member State of Malta finds itself on the frontline of policing and securing Europe’s southern external borders against transnational migrants and preventing migrants’ on-migration to other Member States within the EU. The securitization of migration has been responsible for restricting access to asylum, diluting rights and entitlements to refugee protection, and punishing those who arrive in the EU without valid passports –a visibly racialised and gendered population. The stories of the refugee women interviewed for this research detail the ways in which refugee protection is being eroded, selectively applied and in some cases specifically designed to exclude. In contrast to the majority of migration literature, which has largely focused on the male experience, this book focuses on the experiences of refugee women and aims to contribute to the volume of work dedicated to analysing borders from the perspective of those who cross them. This research strengthens existing criminological literature and has the potential to offer insights to policy makers around the world. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in International Crime and Justice, Securitisation, Refugee Law and Border Control, as well as the general reader.
This chapter gives an introduction to the EU Community Mechanism for Civil Protection (the Mechanism) and the EU Solidarity Fund (EUSF). The Mechanism is a structure that aims to facilitate civil protection assistance between Member States and to third countries in response to major crises, whereas the EUSF makes possible financial support for actions undertaken in the immediate recovery phase of a crisis. The Mechanism may be described as the most practical dimension of EU crisis management and also as one of the first initiatives in the area. Although the Mechanism and the EUSF were established separately, roughly ten years apart, and constitute two different EU crisis management instruments, the context in which they were founded was similar, as are their roles in the wider development of crisis management in the EU.
Rejecting the predominant view that 9/11 encouraged a 'securitization' of migration control, this article argues that political discourse and practice in Europe have remained surprisingly unaffected by the terrorism threat. This finding challenges the critical securities literature, implying the need for a more differentiated theory of the political system and organizational interests. Copyright (c) 2007 The Author(s); Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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