Dichotomies of usage: digital technology for migrants

Reflecting on the rapid development of technology and particularly the focus on digitalization it is interesting to analyze the role of such technologies in the migration discourse. Following the influx of migrants, the digital technology was one of the “new” ways to address easy access to information and was used as a guide for different services provided. In this regard, such digital solutions were sustained by various actors - governmental, non-governmental, private, etc. In this paper, we focus on the dichotomies of usage of digital technology developed for migrants to facilitate the process of social inclusion by providing access to relevant information. From a theoretical point of view, we analyze the process of interaction between user and digital technology from the science and technology studies perspective, arguing that actors in the network including human and non-human as an Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2005) suggests. By focusing on the current mobile applications for migrants we address the patterns of use/ non-use of the digital solution by analyzing deeply the network of all actors involved. Drawing on the current research (Gillespie et. al, 2016) we try to understand the role of the migrant as not a passive user of the mobile software, but as an active agency in the whole innovation process. Our research is empirically grounded on the data collected between November 2019 – January 2020 in Munich, Germany, based on semi-structured interviews with developers of the mobile software and its users. Our particular focus is on the mobile application Integreat, developed in 2015 in Augsburg, Germany, and nowadays spread over 50 municipalities all over Germany. The perspective that we try to bring to attention is that the involvement of migrants-users in the process of development of the software package has a crucial significance for further implementation, however, we are arguing that involvement during the user test phase might not be enough, as we see the migrant and technology itself are the active actors in the network of relations. Another point that should be addressed to understand use as well as non-use, is the transgression of the traditional view on the migrant user. It cannot be seen only as a customer or consumer falling into technological determinism discussion. Thus, the understanding of the non-use is partially hidden inside the information network flow, which we tried to reconstruct. In the analysis of a preliminary taxonomy of non-use, we had identified the connection between the construction of information networks and use of the specific mobile applications by migrants. In this regard, with this paper, we shed light on the dichotomies of usage of mobile applications by migrants and the re-construction of the information network as an active actor in the process of innovation.