Time As Violence: A User-Centric Approach to Digital Migration Management

If improperly implemented, new digital migration management systems can foster the development of opportunistic economies that capitalize on both the protracted waiting periods that people on the move face and the information precarity that they experience in transit. The digitalization of migration management strategies often correlates with technical glitches and opaque selection mechanisms, thereby creating a specialized body of expert knowledge required to successfully navigate such systems. This knowledge allows some individuals to capitalize off the difficulties many people on the move face navigating new digital tools by offering their ‘expert services’ in incipient opportunistic economies.

Despite the lauded infallibility of the algorithms driving digital migration management tools, refocusing on a user-centric approach to the experience of individuals using these tools illustrates the failures of the assumed neutrality of technology. The enforced waiting periods and in-built randomness intended to confer greater equality in these bureaucratic tools may allow actors in opportunistic economies to profit off of the lost time and delayed life projects that the users of these digital policy tools experience. Given the importance of time for people on the move and the costs associated with waylaid journeys and enforced stagnancy, people frequently hope that purchasing services from opportunistic economies will speed up their interactions with digital migration management tools. For newly implemented digital migration management tools to serve as part of a growing Digital Public Infrastructure and provide transferable benefits for digital governance in other contexts, government actors would be wise to consider how the timeliness of digital systems influences the propensity for their intended users to participate in these systems.

This analysis roots itself in the socio-legal examination of individuals’ experiences purchasing migration-related services from service providers in the opportunistic economy while navigating migration policy instruments. The findings of this analysis hold relevance for all types of digital pre-border processing systems, ranging from asylum to labour migration instruments. This research culminates in the development of clear criteria by which policymakers can counteract the emergence of illicit economies based on their migration systems, with benefits both for users navigating these systems and for states seeking to achieve the uniform and non-discriminatory implementation of their migration policies.