Political awareness needed to ethically handle migration data, panel claims

Using location data to help migrants and refugees fleeing persecution, economic destitution or natural disasters needs to be underpinned by an understanding of the power dynamics at play, according to experts.

While location and human migration data can sometimes be used to make positive humanitarian interventions, there is a huge risk it can also be used to track and control the movements of oppressed, marginalised, or otherwise vulnerable populations, according to speakers at the Safe Spaces? Location Data and Human Migration event on 3 July.

The panel was the latest instalment in a series of virtual discussions organised by the Benchmark Initiative, which was established to promote the ethical use of location data.

“One of the challenges with this is balancing creating actionable information versus the ethics of it. If we’re trying to inform coordination groups and service providers to distribute water to certain displacement sites, then you need to know where those displacement sites are,” said Robert Trigwell, a unit lead at the United Nations (UN) Global Displacement Tracking Matrix team, adding that the locations of these sites can be very sensitive.

“People are displaced through ethnic conflict, people are on the move through migration corridors where there’s trafficking, or where there’s potential for xenophobia or potential for border closures – so we have to collect information, but we also need to make sure that information is protected and used appropriately.”

According to both Trigwell and Petra Molnar, acting director of the International Human Rights Programme at the University of Toronto, any action taken to help people on the move must be informed by an understanding of the situation’s power dynamic, not just the data itself.

This means looking at the ways in which different groups or stakeholders in a given situation interact, and how that relationship manifests when one side wields more power than the other.

“What we’re increasingly seeing in the prevalence of migration control technologies is how different technologies affect groups differently,” said Molnar, adding that the refugees and migrants she works with often belong to “groups that are already disenfranchised in the conversation”.

Molnar said a major concern is how location and migration data can be “coopted quite easily” by states and other entities, something that is difficult to tell is happening because “a lot of this decision-making happens behind closed doors”.

“When we’re talking about migration and migration-related risks, the ramifications can be quite far reaching, whether from a privacy perspective, having your data shared with repressive governments, or just even knowing what is happening and how you can meaningfully opt out of it,” she said.

As an example, Trigwell highlighted how some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in South Sudan, where he has previously worked, required people to register their households to get on beneficiary lists for items such as food baskets or tents.

“There’s a power dynamic there – yeah you can opt out, but does that opt you out from the service [completely]? Then opt out is a myth. It doesn’t exist. If you want to cross an international border and you need to show your phone, but yet you don’t want to show your phone, does that mean you can’t cross a border? Would that mean you would then try to cross that border illegally, will you go into a smuggling network?” he said.

“When implementing such technologies, you have to look at what are the adverse impacts this could have, because this could further marginalise the populations that we’re trying to support.”