Information and Communication Technology in Migration - A Framework for Applications, Customization, and Research (2022)

Abstract

“This paper addresses the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in migration governance, support, and experience with particular attention to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, social media, and virtual reality. We propose a framework for technology use based on user groups and process types. We provide examples of using emerging technologies for migration-related tasks within the context of this framework. We then identify how such technologies can be applied to migration-related tasks, developed for customized use, and improved through research to add new features that can help different migration stakeholders. We suggest a series of possible directions for future research and development to take advantage of specific affordances of those emerging technologies more effectively.”

The authors introduce "the Migration-Technology Matrix (MTM) as a framework tomap out possible links between migration-related user groups (macro, meso, and micro) and technical processes (data collection, creation, analysis, visualization, and interpretation)." They "review a series of typical cases that used different ICT tools to perform those common tasks, and identify the gaps in terms of application, customization, and research opportunities."

According to the authors "The Migration-Technology Matrix (MTM) allows us to see technology-migration connections in terms of three levels of migration-related stakeholders and five main information processing types. As demonstrated in previous section, despite the increasing use of ICT by different migration stakeholders, the emerging technologies and their affordances have not been effectively used in this area."

They also "topics that have received very little research attention within the migration context. The issues of trust (for example, who is a trustworthy source for migrants) and privacy (how to protect protect migrant's personal information while collecting useful data) still include many unknowns, and the procedures involved in data collection and communication have to be studied with regards to these issues. There is almost no ICT support for data interpretation or migrants' well-being. Intelligent methods have been used (Puiu et al., 2016; Roda et al., 2016) to help make sense of large amounts of data, but (1) they have not been investigated for migration data, and (2) they have not been developed for individual migrants who have to struggle with the information they receive. Last but not least, personalization and contextualization can be helpful in such cases
as used in many intelligent systems recommending products and services to users (Aggarwal, 2016). A common trend in recommender and search systems these days is to provide recommendations (or search results) that are customized to the needs and interests of specific user or conditions of a specific context. Providing migration-related services to users at any of the here levels and based on the notions of personalization and contextualization is an open area of research."

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