The information practices and politics of migrant-aid work in the US-Mexico borderlands

Abstract

Numerous organizations work to provide humanitarian aid to undocumented migrants along the US-Mexico border—from running shelters in Mexico to placing water on migratory trails. Resistance to information-sharing between organizations (and to the public), especially through technologically mediated means, is common. However, some organizers and volunteers work across organizational boundaries and share information informally. Information secrecy is often justified by concerns that law enforcement authorities or anti-immigration activists might gain access to information, allowing them to harm, detain or remove migrants, or interfere with humanitarian work. The choices made about the collection and (non)disclosure of information are manifestations of what we call “liminal” information practices: such behaviors are unique to humanitarian volunteers working in the gray, ethical area between law enforcement and humanitarian values and action, and they are guided by the information politics at play within this context.

Keywords:

• Humanitarian information activities
• immigration
• information and communication technologies
• information politics
• information practices
• migration

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to all of our respondents, as well as those who have continued to allow us to conduct research within their organizations over the past few years.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Notes

1 The names of individual respondents have been changed and/or obfuscated throughout this article to protect the privacy of those we interviewed.

2 No More Deaths is a faith-based humanitarian and migrant-aid organization based in Southern Arizona, active since 2004. (No More Deaths n.d.)

3 October 16, 2019.

4 Defined by Greenwood et al. (2017, 4), HIA refers to “activities and programs which may include the collection, storage, processing, analysis, further use, transmission, and public release of data and other forms of information by humanitarian actors and/or affected communities.”

5 They draw on Somerville’s (2007) concept of placemaking to describe the motivations for refugees’ information practices in their adopted country.

6 Retrieved on April 13, 2020 from: https://humaneborders.org/migrant-death-mapping/.