From dialog and dialect recognition systems to automated decision-making software, a wide variety of technologies will be used and tested in migration and asylum procedures. These tools may also help streamline bureaucratic processes and expedite decisions, benefitting governments and some migrant workers, but they also set up new vulnerabilities that require new governance frameworks.

Refugees experience numerous obstacles as they try to find a safe home in a fresh country, where they can build a lifestyle for themselves. To take action, they need to include a safeguarded way of demonstrating who they are in order to access social services and work. One of these is Everest, the world’s initially device-free global payment treatment platform that helps refugees to verify all their identities without the need for paper documents. Additionally, it enables them to develop savings and assets, so that they can become self-sufficient.

Other technology tools can help to boost refugees’ employment prospective by corresponding them with communities where they will flourish. Germany’s Match’In job, for instance, uses an algorithm fed with relevant info on hold municipalities and refugees’ specialist experience to get these people in places that they are susceptible to find jobs.

But this kind of technologies could be subject to personal privacy concerns and opaque decision-making, potentially leading to biases or errors that may lead to expulsions in breach of foreign law. And moreover to the dangers, they can create additional boundaries that prevent refugees from reaching their particular final destination : the secure, welcoming country they aspire to live in. A/Prof. Ghezelbash may be a senior lecturer in renardière and immigration law on the University of New South Wales (UNSW). He leads the Access to Rights & Technology stream belonging to the Allen’s Hub for Rules, Technology and Innovation. His research covers the areas of law, calculating, anthropology, foreign relations, political science www.ascella-llc.com/ and behavioural psychology, all informed by his personal refugee track record.