Identity at the margins: data justice and refugee experiences with digital identity systems in Lebanon, Jordan, and Uganda

ABSTRACT

This paper examines refugees' experiences with and perspectives on the digital identity systems used by humanitarian organizations to collect, manage, and share their personal data. Through a qualitative study with 198 refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and Uganda, we show how existing humanitarian identity systems present numerous challenges for refugees. For example, we find that refugees have little to no knowledge of the institutional systems and processes through which their personal data are managed and used. In addition, refugees are typically not able to exercise agency with regard to data that are collected about them (e.g. given choices about the data collected). At the same time, we show how refugees make active efforts to negotiate the various identities available to them, consciously weighing the benefits and constraints associated with different statuses to maximize their access to services, eligibility for employment, and spatial mobility. We engage with Taylor's lens of data justice to make sense of our findings and conclude by highlighting the potential of feminist science and technology study frameworks to further develop theories of data justice that can support analysis of identification systems that serve the interests of the most vulnerable.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• identity
• displaced populations
• data justice
• feminism

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank all our participants. We also acknowledge Paul Currion for his contributions to this work. This research was funded by DFID under contract number PO40107257 and a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant #1748903.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Emrys Schoemaker is Research Director at Caribou Digital and a visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Cornell Tech in New York City. He has nearly two decades of experience in the field of international development, where his research focuses on the use of digital technologies in the Global South, particularly focusing on the use of mobile technology, the Internet and, more recently, on identification systems, including in the humanitarian sector and with refugees.

Dina Baslan has over nine years of experience in the humanitarian/development field. She has written and conducted research on topics related to media, displacement, and migration, often focusing on areas where the three disciplines intersect. She has over five years of holding full-time regional positions in the humanitarian/development industry. Dina has co-authored multiple publications on the conditions and lived experience of refugees in the Middle East and Africa, and is the co-founder of Sawiyan for Community Development, a Jordanian grassroots organisation focusing on advocacy, research and community building with minority refugees in Jordan.

Bryan Pon analyzes platform business models and user behavior in emerging markets, with a focus on financial services, Internet access, identification, and the app economy.

Nicola Dell is an Assistant Professor at Cornell University based at the Cornell Tech campus in New York City. She also a part of the Jacobs Technion Cornell Institute. At Cornell, Nicki is a member of the Center for Health Equity, the Digital Life Initiative, the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, and she co-founded the Clinic to End Tech Abuse. Nicki's research interests are in human-computer interaction (HCI), computer security and privacy, and information and communication technologies and development (ICTD). Her main focus is on designing, building, and evaluating novel computing systems that improve the lives of underserved populations in the US and around the world.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

We sincerely thank all our participants. We also acknowledge Paul Currion for his contributions to this work. This research was funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) under contract number PO40107257 and a National Science Foundation CAREER grant number 1748903.