Systems and Asylum Procedures

A/Prof Derya Ozkul, Mature Research Other, Refugee Studies Centre, School of Oxford

Increasingly, solutions and algorithms are being used to streamline asylum procedures. These kinds of range from biometric matching search engines that examine iris scans and fingerprints to directories for asylum seekers and political refugees to chatbots to help people signup protection cases. These tools are designed to make this easier with respect to states and agencies to process asylum applications, www.ascella-llc.com/asylum-procedure-advice especially several systems are slowed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing levels of obligated displacement.

But they raise a number of human rights concerns. For instance , privacy problems, opaque decision-making, and the potential for biases or equipment errors which may lead to discriminatory outcomes. They also pose significant obstacles to migrant workers and asylum seekers, who are often times already disenfranchised and insecure.

Ozkul’s exploration explores the ways in which new technologies may be used to verify details and narratives of migrants, allowing them to accelerate their asylum application procedure. It also discusses the ways by which these solutions can create a particular informational space around migrant workers, and how they will configure their subjecthood. Pursuing Foucault, she argues that such methods are both local and institutional. For example , iris scanning algorithms can be seen simply because an institutional technology, as they require the migrant to enter a specific location in order to be accepted; while advice algorithms are commercial and global in their results, configuring content as consumers.

As a result, they will enact a certain form of hegemonic power above displaced people. This is especially true given the current race to the bottom level in asylum policy : with some countries offering incentives like the Nansen passport to aid cachette resettling and others impacting restrictive plans that block their particular access to area and pressure them into dangerous and deadly trips.