Digital expulsions: Refugees’ carcerality and the technological disruptions of asylum

Abstract

Introducing the notion of “digital expulsions”, this paper argues that digital technologies in refugee humanitarianism are mainly used for hampering migrants from becoming asylum seekers and getting access to rights. Focusing on Greece, it explores which carceral mechanisms are enforced and sustained through the incorporation of digital technologies in refugee governmentality: it contends that it is key to investigate the specific harms that digital technologies generate on asylum seekers. The article intertwines scholarship on digital technologies in migration governance with carceral geography literature and shows that carceral mechanisms are enacted also through digital technologies. The paper draws attention to how in Greece asylum seekers’ access to the asylum procedure and to financial and humanitarian support is further obstructed due to forced technological intermediations. In the second part, it investigates refugees’ carcerality considering the increasing use of technology in refugee camps and in the asylum procedures: it contends that carceral mechanisms are enforced beyond detention and shows that these work by debilitating and choking refugees’ lives and stealing their lifetime.