174 research outputs found
Practices of radical digital care: towards autonomous queer migration
No full textDigital connectivity of queer migrants on the move to Europe plays a crucial role in confronting border regimes, heteronormativity and racist oppression. ICTs at the disposal of queer migrants interrupt the material politics of silence and violence. However, digital technology also implies serious hazards. Queer migrants use digital space to empower themselves, to build networks, and to trace, reach and create safer spaces of care. This paper conceptualises how care is materialised in self-organised actions and horizontal relationships that question power regimes and commodification practices while introducing the notion of radical digital care. Digital spaces of (radical) care constitute safe spaces of compassion where people can be heard and believed. They act as points of reference for queer people seeking recognition and care. Moreover, queer migration constitutes constant shifting between subject and care positions that redefine the notion of home and safety and the material ordering of migration itself. Based on a qualitative study of ten semi-structured interviews with solidarians and migrants, this paper reveals how the appropriation of digital media by queer migrants re-arranges the material politics of the borderland by contesting border technologies, and through radical care, allows communities to live through hardship, fear, and abuse.<br/
Migration and counter-information practices: enhancing mobility while subverting the mainstream media
No full textThere is a growing critique within media studies regarding the democratic
deficits embedded in a corporate-dominated, highly commercialized media
system. Particularly, these deficits refer to inequalities of access, issues
of representation and political/ideological power, economic and structural
alignment with globalizing capitalism, and proliferation of consumer culture
(Carroll and Hackett 2006). Moreover, mainstream media has been accused
of reproducing migration critical and xenophobic discourses (d’Haenens et
al. 2019; Titley 2019). At the same time and to counter these deficits and
discourses, social movements, and people in solidarity with migrants, have
taken advantage of the spectacular technological changes since the popular-
ization of the internet and digital media. They are early adopters of digital
technology, and they use digital media in creative and alternative ways for
inclusive organizing and to encourage alternative forms of participation in
democratic politics (Uldam and Vestergaard 2015)
Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies
Full text linkThis Open Access book investigates the methodological and ethical dilemmas involved when working with digital technologies and large-scale datasets in relation to ethnographic studies of digital migration practices and trajectories. Digital technologies reshape not only every phase of the migration process itself (by providing new ways to access, to share and preserve relevant information) but also the activities of other actors, from solidarity networks to border control agencies. In doing so, digital technologies create a whole new set of ethical and methodological challenges for migration studies: from data access to data interpretation, privacy protection, and research ethics more generally. Of specific concern are the aspects of digital migration researchers accessing digital platforms used by migrants, who are subject to precarious and insecure life circumstances, lack recognised papers and are in danger of being rejected and deported. Thus, the authors call for new modes of caring for (big) data when researching migrants’ digital practices in the configuration of migration and borders. Besides taking proper care of research participants’ privacy, autonomy, and security, this also spans carefully establishing analytically sustainable environments for the respective data sets. In doing so, the book argues that it is essential to carefully reflect on researchers’ own positioning as being part of the challenge they seek to address
Critical Perspectives on Predictive Policing: Anticipating Proof?
No full textThis chapter interrogates the question of what defines predictive policing. Our point of departure is notions in Science and Technology Studies that attend to how boundary objects such as predictive policing are produced through the interrelation of politics, sociotechnical imaginaries, and contestations. Through ethnographic inquiry on the empirical case of the POL-INTEL platform of the Danish police, we follow the evolution and demarcations in the (re)-classifications of POL-INTEL from predictive to non-predictive. In so doing, we situate POL-INTEL in the wider international context regarding the development of predictive policing and investigate the boundary work between predictive policing and similar concepts such as Intelligence-Led Policing. Concisely, we argue that the development of the notion of predictive policing is fundamentally unstable and tied to political and economic interests
Analog flows in digital worlds:‘Migration multiples’ and digital heterotopias in Greek territory
Full text linkMigrants’ engagement with Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) reveals a wide spectrum of resistance practices that enact “heterotopias” (Foucault, 1967) that extend from the human body to transnational landscapes (Gillespie et al., 2016). This paper enhances the theoretical debate on migration with new ways of understanding borders and space as fluid, autonomous, and provisional linkages between humans and nonhumans. Based on findings from field research conducted in Greece, it aims to discuss how migrants’ digitalpractices generate new spaces and materialities. Attending to the making of migrants’-ICTs intertwining it examines the emergence of unbordering practices, the creation of crucial solidarity networks and the risks and limitations that emerge when using ICTs. Finally, the paper highlights the recent migratory influx not simply as a result of neoliberal doctrines, but (also) as an act of disobedience to fortress Europe through the creation of digital-urban heterotopias through the lenses of Migration Studies, Science and Technology Studies and Critical spatial theory
The Politics of High-Level Nuclear Waste Management in Sweden: on Confined Research versus Research in the Wild.
No full textIn 2010, the Swedish nuclear energy industry is expected to announce a proposal for the final storage of high-level nuclear waste in bedrock. The underground storage concept is attracting increasing interest from other countries in Europe. Because of the nature of Swedish political culture, the development of the actual method for final disposal is commonly perceived as resting on consensus and democratic cooperation. However, this paper argues that the aforementioned disposal method instead represents the outcome of intense conflict between the nuclear energy industry and the anti-nuclear movement. Accordingly, any investigation of the technical and political solutions to controversial environmental problems should involve the study of lay people and social movements. The present study does so, employing theoretical notions from science and technology studies that allow the analysis to conceptualize actions and strategies (enactments) of the nuclear energy industry (confined research) and the anti-nuclear movement (research in the wild).This is the pre-published version of the article:Jonas Anshelm and Vasilis Galis, The Politics of High-Level Nuclear Waste Management in Sweden: on Confined Research versus Research in the Wild, 2009, Environmental Policy and Governance, (19), 269-280.http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/eet.512Copyright: Wileyhttp://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Brand/id-35.htm
The Role of Data Integration and Analysis Platforms in Contemporary Society. An Introduction
No full textEgbert S, Galis V, Gundhus HIO. The Role of Data Integration and Analysis Platforms in Contemporary Society. An Introduction. Information, Communication & Society. 2024
Energy behaviour as a collectif : The case of Colonia: student dormitories at a Swedish university
No full textA household’s energy behaviour consists of several processes and interactions and involves the decisions and functions of several entities. The topic of this study is to reconstruct, through narrations, the process of designing and implementing the new student dorms at Linköping University through the lens of household energy behaviour. In particular, we aim to investigate how the interactions between entities such as the builders, landlords, users, ventilators, heaters, climate and so forth co-perform energy behaviour in the setting of residential student buildings. Inspired by the actor-network theory, the study treats energy behaviour as a hybrid collectif. It is the relations and their heterogeneity that are important in this approach. The project studies how heterogeneous relations among everyday practices, human experiences and interactions with nonhumans enact energy use patterns.The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com:Vasilis Galis and Per Gyberg, Energy behaviour as a collectif: The case of Colonia: student dormitories at a Swedish university, 2010, Energy Efficiency.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12053-010-9087-1Copyright: Springer Science Business Mediahttp://www.springerlink.com
Introduction : the discreet charm of predictive policing
Full text linkFunding: ESRC project 'NordForsk Digitalisation of the Public Sector - Critical Understanding of Predictive Policing' (grant number ES/V009338/1).Over the past 20 years, police organisations and practices across the globe have adopted data-driven tools to predict and prevent crime. Advances in digitalisation combined with the increasing role of private security, tech, and consulting companies are reshaping contemporary policing. Techno-managerialism, underpinned by computational logic, has altered the way we think – from causality to correlations and probabilities. In this introduction, we present the historical origins of predictive policing, a genealogical analysis of the concept, and introduce external factors for understanding the rise of predictive policing. Next, the critical understanding of predictive policing will be presented. The background is that the discreet charm of prediction, in terms of increased efficiency, reduced fiscal burdens, improved accuracy of decision-making, streamlined data management, and lower crime rates, has in recent years been met with scepticism, considerable critique, and even warnings of dystopia. We conclude the introduction by presenting our interdisciplinary approach to predictive policing and the volume's analysis of digital police infrastructure in Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Sweden, and the UK.Peer reviewe
Enacting disability: how can science and technology studies inform disability studies?
No full textThis paper aims to discuss how science and technology studies (STS) can inform disability studies and challenge dominant approaches, such as the medical and the social models, in the ordering and representation of disability. Disability studies and STS have followed somewhat parallel paths in the history of ideas. From a positivist approach to their research objects to a strong social constructivism, both disciplines have moved to post-modern conceptualisations of science, technology and disability. In the same manner and challenging the extremes of modernism (either ordering disability as a bodily impairment or locating disability solely in society), this paper brings the conceptual vocabulary of actor-network theory (ANT) to the field of disability studies. ANT enables the ordering of disability as a simultaneous biological, material and semiotic phenomenon. Exchanges of performative agency between these elements determine the disability experience. The focus of the analysis shifts from merely defining disability as an impairment, handicap, or social construction (epistemology) to how disability is experienced and enacted in everyday practices, in policy-making, in socio-technical arenas, in the body, and in the built environment (ontology). This adoption of an ontological approach to disability allows the analysis to not only discuss how disability is done, but also to follow how disability groups and carriers of disability expertise and experience intervene in policy-making by developing ‘research in the wild’ and confronting scientific experts in different fora (ontological politics).</p
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