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      Technocolonialism: Digital Innovation and Data Practices in the Humanitarian Response to Refugee Crises

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      Social Media + Society
      SAGE Publications

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          Abstract

          Digital innovation and data practices are increasingly central to the humanitarian response to recent refugee and migration crises. In this article, I introduce the concept of technocolonialism to capture how the convergence of digital developments with humanitarian structures and market forces reinvigorates and reshapes colonial relationships of dependency. Technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that data and digital innovation play in entrenching power asymmetries between refugees and aid agencies and ultimately inequalities in the global context. This occurs through a number of interconnected processes: by extracting value from refugee data and innovation practices for the benefit of various stakeholders; by materializing discrimination associated with colonial legacies; by contributing to the production of social orders that entrench the “coloniality of power”; and by justifying some of these practices under the context of “emergencies.” By reproducing the power asymmetries of humanitarianism, data and innovation practices become constitutive of humanitarian crises themselves.

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            The Darker Side of Western Modernity

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              On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Social Media + Society
                Social Media + Society
                SAGE Publications
                2056-3051
                2056-3051
                July 26 2019
                July 2019
                July 26 2019
                July 2019
                : 5
                : 3
                : 205630511986314
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
                Article
                10.1177/2056305119863146
                c9f1df4f-7c40-4b9b-8a11-8f6307dd4b2e
                © 2019

                http://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license

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