Technologies and Asylum Procedures

A/Prof Derya Ozkul, Senior citizen Research Guy, Refugee Research Centre, School of Oxford

Increasingly, systems and methods are being used to streamline asylum procedures. These types of range from biometric matching applications that assess iris tests and finger prints to internet directories for asylum seekers and political refugees to chatbots to help people signup protection instances. These tools are designed to make that easier for the purpose of states and agencies to process asylum applications, Visit Website especially numerous systems are currently slowed down due to the COVID-19 outbreak and elevating levels of forced displacement.

But they raise a number of human legal rights concerns. Such as privacy concerns, opaque decision-making, and the potential for biases or machine errors that may lead to discriminatory outcomes. In addition, they pose significant conflicts to migrants and asylum seekers, who are frequently already disenfranchised and vulnerable.

Ozkul’s exploration explores many ways in which fresh technologies may be used to verify details and narratives of migrants, allowing them to increase their asylum application procedure. It also examines the ways by which these systems can create a specific informational space around migrant workers, and how they configure all their subjecthood. Pursuing Foucault, this lady argues that such algorithms are both comarcal and institutional. For example , eyes scanning methods can be seen since an institutional technology, as they require the migrant to enter a specific area in order to be recognised; while advice algorithms are business and global in their effects, configuring subject matter as customers.

As a result, they enact a certain form of hegemonic power over displaced people. This is especially true given the current contest to the lower part in asylum policy – with some countries offering bonuses like the Nansen passport to aid cachette resettling and others imposing restrictive procedures that block their particular access to location and drive them back in dangerous and deadly travels.