Extract, Datafy and Disrupt: Refugees’ Subjectivities between Data Abundance and Data Disregard

Abstract

This paper deals with data extraction and data circulation that are at stake in refugee governmentality with a focus on the Cash Assistance Programme in Greece. It focuses on the data extraction activities which are part of the cash Assistance Programme and on the ways in which data is shared and not shared among the actors involved. It starts by critically engaging with debates on techno-humanitarianism in refugee governmentality, and it moves on by drawing attention to the constitutive dynamics between data abundance and data disregard. Then, it analyses the extent to which different actors can access and act upon the data. The second part of the article centres on the peculiar modes of subjectivation that asylum seekers are shaped by, as cards beneficiaries and techno-users. It shows that asylum seekers are both passive surfaces of data extraction and, at the same time, are object of a request to speak and to produce data and feedback about their use of the card. The paper concludes with a section about the injunction imposed on asylum seekers to act as autonomous and responsible techno-users and, at the same time, to comply with multiple spatial restrictions.