Background: 1 in 8 adults receive a diagnosis of depression. Research has examined South Asian experiences of depression; however, by banding together the different South Asian ethnic sub-groups, research has failed to take into account different religious beliefs, language, cultural and economic diversity, migration narratives, political contexts, and socio-economic circumstances across the diaspora and how this influences depression. Exploring specific cultures within the broad term ‘South Asian’ is important to ensure that service providers validate and understand cultural differences to provide appropriate care and treatment. Importantly, there is limited research on Punjabi Sikh experiences of depression.
Methodology: This study used individual semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences that led British Punjabi Sikhs to seek a diagnosis of depression from the primary care service. Interviews were conducted to identify the journey participants experienced during this time. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Findings: Three themes were drawn from the data, highlighting how cultural stigma, language barriers, and emotional struggles, such as shame and anger, delay British Punjabi Sikhs from recognising and seeking help for depression. Fear of judgment and a lack of culturally sensitive resources often lead to silence and hesitation in sharing diagnoses. Coping strategies like substance use and anger frequently mask depression, complicating access to support. Participants described a gradual, internal build-up of distress, with cultural and familial barriers deepening feelings of shame and identity conflict after diagnosis.
Discussion: This study highlights the importance of professionals holding in mind cultural humility and collaborating proactively with communities to improve mental health literacy. Services should be co-developed with individuals with lived experience to ensure relevance and accessibility.
Background: People with lived experience of mental health difficulties have highlighted that research outcomes do not capture issues they feel are important. This mismatch might affect the validity of trials, such that beneficial effects could be missed, or results could be counted as a benefit when they are not. Co-development of patient-reported outcome measures ensures patient perspectives are captured adequately.
Aim: To identify mental health outcome measures that meet a strict definition of being co-developed and to describe the methods and quantity of involvement at each pre-defined stage of measure co-development.
Method: Five electronic databases were searched (MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Embase), alongside a search of the non-peer reviewed literature and handsearching. The study was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42024520941). Retrieved papers were independently screened and quality was assessed following PRISMA guidelines. Extracted information were combined and described narratively.
Results: The search identified 23 mental health outcome measures from 34 papers. The most frequent types of involvement to co-develop outcomes were service-user researchers and lived experience groups as advisors undertaking activities such as leading qualitative exercises, but there were gaps. Many benefits were reported such as increased relevancy and acceptability of the measures. No disease-specific outcomes were identified in depression.
Conclusions: Based on these findings, recommendations for methods and a novel scale for judging quantity of involvement for co-development were identified, but challenges for co-development remain. The reviewed papers show that co-development is possible and could provide more relevant and meaningful outcomes for clinical practice and research.
Many humanitarian organisations in Africa are revolutionising their service delivery through new technology. This has become important also in the context of rising migrant numbers.
Although digital tools are useful, I argue that Africa must adopt and use them pragmatically because for migrants, in my opinion, the priority should be improving traditional approaches to managing displaced people, with digital tools adopted only if they add a real value. The digital tools are used in many countries including Ghana, Kenya and Uganda. Biometric data – such as face recognition and fingerprints – is widely used in voucher assistance programmes. One example is the World Food Programme’s Bamba Chakula initiative in Kenya, which provides food and essential services to migrants. In South Africa, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s ReedSafe platform allows migrants to access communications facilities and save electronic copies of their documents. RedSafe incorporates the Protecting Family Links (PFL) service and the Digital Vault. PFL is a free confidential platform linking migrants with their missing relatives. The Digital Vault allows migrants to upload and store important documents such as identity cards, passports and birth certificates in a cloud-type service. The above examples clearly show benefits but there are also dangers in using identity systems that target masses of people. If the risks are ignored, human rights violations and identity theft or digital intrusion will become inevitable. The risks of digital humanitarianism, however, extend beyond identity theft and digital intrusion. For example, governments in border management, counter-terrorism and law enforcement without the affected person’s knowledge can use biometrics collected for humanitarian purposes. Social media is also helpful in displacement contexts but it can also be abused if accountability measures are missing. Misinformation and hate speech are major problems on these platforms in Africa. In South Africa, for example, Operation Dudula, which started as an online campaign against foreigners in 2021, has been used for xenophobic attacks and racial discrimination against migrants. In sum, in my opinion, Africa’s main challenge is to embrace policies that give migrants mobility, access to livelihoods and basic services. Innovative technology will not solve these issues unless there are corresponding policies that safeguard migrants
Dominant narratives on migration perpetuate stereotypes, stigmatize people, and justify restrictive mobility policies. Algorithmic systems have a powerful influence on how these narratives are spread, taken up, reinforced, or resisted. These mechanisms filter and curate information flows in unpredictable ways, as algorithmic processes are largely infrastructural and therefore hidden from the user’s experience. This is particularly impactful to migrants, whose voices and stories are already marginalized as they move from one terrain to another.
This presentation presents preliminary outcomes of a participatory, co-creation project the authors are undertaking with digital content creators to counter dominant narratives. Through immersive interviews followed by co-creation workshops, we iteratively explore with recent immigrant digital content creators in the Netherlands: How do digital content creation navigate identity formation and agency within algorithmically-driven digital media ecosystems? What tactics and tools might be used to resist negative narrative frames and build more complexity into how migrants are portrayed? By building a methodology that is focused on practical and applied techniques that can be used by communities themselves for action-oriented responses, this strategic intervention aims to further the field of mobility justice.
In addition to the methods, framework, and key findings, we also discuss the toolkit we are working on with our collaborating participants to help other recent immigrant content creators critically examine their own content and consider how to playfully generate potential counter narratives.
Digital technologies have become increasingly ubiquitous gateways and necessary tools to access crucial aspects of socio-economical life, a process further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The management of human mobility is central area where this transformation is taking place.
This paper explores how migrants understand, experience, and navigate these processes in contemporary European settings. Specifically, the study analyses data collected in multiple sites across Italy in 2023-2024 through interviews with migrants, NGO workers, legal advisors and other border stakeholders. It focuses on post-2015 Italy, whose position at Europe’s Southern border and its role as a key migratory route has made it a place of experimentation for border practices innovation, especially in the aftermath of the 2015 “refugee crisis”. In its complex assemblage of long-established paper-based processes and newer datafied practices, the digitalized bureaucracies of the 21st century frontier has ripple effects on migrants’ lives, their sense of identity and belonging, and processes of integration. Drawing from the fields of STS, data justice, and the biopolitics of biometrics, I seek to expand the theoretical conceptualizations of the migration-technology nexus beyond the existing focus on data protection and surveillance to include migrants’ embodied experiences of the new, dispersed and datafied frontier.
Overlooked by much current scholarship on ever-evolving technology and migration, radio continues to foster community and connection among the Irish diaspora. Broadcasting Ireland’s indigenous Gaelic sports uniquely attracts both domestic and diasporic audiences but this research explores how sports radio shapes belonging for Irish listeners abroad. We found that Irish sporting organisations are deeply embedded in local communities, fostering strong cultural bonds that the diaspora carries overseas and yearns for from their new homes.
Drawing on interviews with Irish based in the UK and USA, alongside a conversation with a renowned sports radio broadcaster, the study reveals that sports radio sustains a vital link to Ireland for many of its listeners. With a lens borrowed from feminist memory studies, we demonstrate the nature of collective memory and nostalgia for communal listening in the past shape current experiences. Although sports radio once offered shared listening experiences, unpacking memories of sports radio, it became clear that listening practices have never been fully inclusive and have drastically changed from communal in the past to more individualised today. Soundscapes were predominantly carried by male Irish voices and listening settings were often recalled with Irish women at the margins as facilitators rather than full participants. Today, communal listening is rare, and respondents expressed nostalgia for radio’s ‘better pasts’—symbolising broader diasporic community loss in a hyper-individualised world. However, through digitalisation and global reach radio increasingly directs belonging towards Ireland and fosters togetherness among the diaspora.
In the contemporary world, migration is being perceived contentiously as an Islamophobic discourse that Islamizes migrants and portrays them as an “Islamophobia-induced migration” (IIM) that has to be contained by more stringent border and immigration laws. Modern boundaries encapsulate more than their geographical expressions; they are knotty structures that shape reality, ideality, and virtual environments. As part of IIM entrepreneurship and colonial ecosystems, the interaction of IIM manifestations of bordering processes intensifies exclusion and prevents mobility. Islamophobic ideas flourish in both physical and algorithmic spaces, which happens in both structural frameworks and public debate, especially on social media platforms. With significant human rights and freedoms ramifications, advanced technical advancements have revolutionized bordering procedures and produced interoperable border infrastructures and ubiquitous border ecosystems. Technology, such as big data and AI, is employed along with activities on international borders to shape migratory routes, increase surveillance, criminalize migrants, and undermine migrant solidarity. In this context, digital media platforms and technology have also proven to be resistance paraphernalia, exposing IIM and social justice movements and creating anti-Islamophobic spaces and hope solidarities. Thus, the author makes a case for the Constitutionalization of border technologies to elude, demand, and finally dilute boundaries in a globalized world where conservative and far-right bigotry threatens to marginalize communities more profoundly. The author examines recent advancements in the nexus of AI surveillance technology in managing international borders and IIM to offer an understanding of the processes and ramifications of constitutionalizing border crossings. To accomplish equitable societies, we must constitutionalize the technology and combat Islamophobia.
RefugeeDataMinder (https://refugeedataminder.com) is a practice-led research project that responds to longstanding scholarly critiques of misplaced accountability in international refugee protection by proposing a digital archival design where data becomes a site of power that can be contested and reclaimed. The United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) legalises individuals as refugees who would otherwise be categorised as illegal immigrants, in return for multi-billion-dollar annual funding from donor states and the public, funnelling them into its protection and assistance services when national governments delegate their responsibilities under the UN Refugee Convention. In the absence of independent oversight, UNHCR operates within a conflict of interest, acting as both evaluator and subject of evaluation as it transforms individuals registered with the organisation from data subjects into subjects of data through this quantification process.
Visibility and accountability are intimately connected. When rights violations are obscured or unrecorded, the actual gap in refugee protection remains unaccounted for. Visibility concerns not just data absence, but how algorithmic systems structure and privilege narrative possibilities. UNHCR holds significant technical and financial resources to produce curated representations of refugee lives, while scholarly data and grassroots testimonies that document injustice remain siloed, archived but unseen.
The archive draws together these fragmented narratives to surface what has been erased from public view or never recorded, with an architecture of visibility where inconsistencies in UNHCR’s data are a marker of withheld accountability. Designed to evolve through computational and humanities-led methods, the archive explores what else data could do and who else it could serve.
This presentation examines how border security practices, media technologies, and geological environments generate reverberations at the Russian-Lithuanian border on the Curonian Spit, a peninsula along the southeastern Baltic Sea coastline. The talk introduces a research-creation project titled Radiant Center, which investigates two interrelated phenomena: the operationalization of the electromagnetic spectrum in border maintenance and the geological agency of an aeolian sandscape that proves recalcitrant to national security objectives. By employing embodied listening methodologies, this work reveals how border technologies become embedded in—and contested by—physical landscapes. The project combines field recordings of two-way radio communications, electromagnetic emissions, and subterranean vibrations with interviews and archival materials to create sonic compositions that amplify media-environment entanglements. Through attention to both on-site surveillance systems and remote border management technologies, Radiant Center demonstrates how media infrastructures and environmental conditions collaborate and collide in ways that destabilize national borders. Revealing how geological formations actively participate in the negotiation of political boundaries, this talk contributes to broader debates about the role of nonhuman actors in technological systems of control.
How can we use creative methodologies in our research, analysis, and dissemination to contest the inhumanity of every day border practices and rehumanise discourse around asylum seekers in the UK? In this presentation, researcher Dr Charlotte Sanders and PhD candidate Sudip Sen present two examples of how they have used storytelling as a creative method towards this end.
Sudip presents one example from his mixed-media anti-racist creative practice to communicate the ways in which racism is reproduced in the media, in this case critiquing the terms of the Rwanda policy debate on phone-in radio. Sudip draws from the Russian formalist concept of ‘ostranenie’ (defamiliarizing the familiar, making strange) using naïve narrators, juxtaposition and misnaming/not naming to affectively engage audiences differently on questions of justice for refugees and racism. He emphasises the media as a commodity and that creative methods are not merely a means to communicate pre-existing research, but form a part of the analysis itself.
Charlotte presents her short animation which uses voice actors to share asylum-seekers’ experiences of food provisioning in UK asylum ‘contingency’ hotels, where the inadequacy of food is causing chronic and acute declines in health. Sanders explores how audio-visual forms like this disrupt the role of researcher as ‘expert’ and the mediator of their interlocutors’ voices and perspectives. As such, creative methods can facilitate the direct and unfiltered communication of those in struggle against border power, and support a decolonial commitment to non-extractive research.
The increasing deportation of Brazilian migrants in recent years reflects the tightening of U.S. immigration policies since the Trump administration, reinforcing both physical and internal mechanisms of migration control. U.S. immigration law defines strict entry and residency conditions, with deportation serving as a key enforcement tool. Many Brazilians attempt to cross the Mexican border under dangerous conditions, while others overstay visas, becoming irregular migrants. Intensified enforcement has led to a surge in deportations, reinforcing the perception of migrants as subjects of border control even beyond territorial limits.
Deportation extends beyond physical removal; it acts as a mechanism of bordering that shapes migrant identities and experiences. The concept of the bordered migrant illustrates how borders are no longer confined to geographical boundaries but are embedded in individuals whose mobility and legal status remain under constant scrutiny. Brazilian migrants, even in urban centres far from territorial borders, face restrictive policies, surveillance, and legal uncertainty. These invisible borders dictate their access to services, employment, and protections, reinforcing systemic exclusion.
Diplomatic agreements between Brazil and the United States attempt to balance sovereignty with human rights. However, mass deportations and expedited removals raise concerns over due process violations and non-compliance with international protection standards. Deportation flights carrying Brazilian nationals highlight the limitations of these agreements, demonstrating how migrants remain at the centre of border enforcement even upon return.
This study examines the political and legal dimensions of Brazilian deportations, focusing on new forms of borders and the bordered migrant, and offering insights into more equitable migration policies.
Colonisation imposed external systems that shaped institutions and knowledge, reinforcing exclusion and suppressing alternatives. European imperialists weaponised migration through genocide, enslavement, and war, constructing racial hierarchies to secure power and wealth (Bashi, 2023; Marx, 1997). Today, border regimes and technologies sustain these colonial functions by controlling racialised mobility through exclusionary policies(Vlase, 2024). Colonial power structures shape technology, significantly influencing migration. For instance, AI-driven systems disproportionately reject Global South applicants, perpetuating racial inequalities (Cruz, 2021).
This research presents three engaging decolonising methodologies to foster equity in migration studies. First, a Decolonial Research Lens requires researchers to unlearn dominant knowledge systems, centring non-Western and migrant perspectives, directly challenging Western academia’s authority (Vlase, 2024). Decolonising technology focuses on the top-down (intellectual liberation) model, which aims to decolonise the mindset of technology designers and seeks to decolonise the technology itself (Ansari, 2019; Hui, 2016).
Second, Decolonising Migration Theory critiques borders as Eurocentric, colonial constructs that control and racialise populations, reinforcing capitalist power. It highlights how colonialism-driven global inequalities shape migration through predictive analytics and algorithmic profiling (Bashi, 2023).
Third, an intersectional framework integrates multifaceted migrant characteristics, countering reductive narratives that isolate migration from broader socio-political contexts. This approach sheds light on the colonial legacies embedded within contemporary bordering practices, deepening our understanding of migrant experiences (Vlase, 2024). In contrast to traditional top-down strategies, bottom-up approaches are migrant-led, community-driven technological initiatives which decolonise technology organically (Cruz, 2021).
Integrating decolonial methodologies with innovative technological approaches, this research repositions migration as central to today’s interconnected world, directly confronting colonial infrastructures.
The onset of neoliberal policies in late twentieth-century India led to a steep rise in urban migration. Small-scale farmers were displaced by large-scale commercial farming, and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) struggled to compete with big corporate companies. The sudden and intense automation-driven sectors rendered millions jobless and prompted large sections of rural and semi-urban populations to migrate to metropolitan cities in search of daily wage work.
This paper draws on two novels—The Many Lives of Syeda X by Neha Dixit and Homebound by Puja Changoiwala—both of which offer insights into the lives of migrant urban wage workers. Both authors, who are journalists, have worked closely with the populations they depict. In Dixit’s text, Syeda’s family of traditional handloom weavers lose their livelihood to power looms and migrate to New Delhi. In Changoiwala’s novel, Meher’s family is forced to relocate to the financial capital of Mumbai after their crop yields failed to meet the market overtaken by commercial farming, .
This paper analyses these narratives to explore the human suffering associated with migration. I raise the following questions: How do these characters perceive themselves after losing their traditional skills to the forces of intense technology-driven big capital? How is the migrant’s struggle for livelihood portrayed in the texts? How does social location—specifically, Meher’s identity as a Dalit and Syeda’s as a Muslim—impact their experience of loss of livelihood and migration?
This study investigates how Tamil director Mari Selvaraj’s films adapt cultural memory to contest and reconfigure borders of space, caste, and identity in Tamil Nadu, positioning cinematic adaptation as a decolonial praxis. Analyzing Pariyerum Perumal (2018) and Karnan (2021), the research argues that Selvaraj’s work transcends textual fidelity, employing collaborative storytelling, sensory aesthetics, and non-linear temporality to reclaim Dalit histories suppressed by Brahminical and state narratives. Through a framework synthesizing cultural memory theory, postcolonial phenomenology, and critical caste studies, the paper examines three adaptive strategies: (1) spatial remapping, where villages and campuses are reimagined as sites of Dalit counter-memory; (2) collaborative co-creation with marginalized communities, subverting extractive representation; and (3) affective temporality, using ritual drumming, ancestral echoes, and tactile imagery (soil, laboring bodies) to materialize memory as cyclical and embodied. Close analysis reveals how Selvaraj’s cinema dismantles physical borders (segregated spaces), social hierarchies (caste/gender norms), and psychological confines (internalized trauma), transforming adaptation into a tool of resistance. Methodologically, the study challenges Eurocentric adaptation studies’ privileging of literary sources by centering oral histories and participatory practices. It further bridges Tamil Nadu’s regional specificity with global debates on decolonial media, demonstrating how marginalized communities weaponize cultural memory to redraw belonging. By foregrounding collaboration, sensory form, and nonlinear time, Selvaraj’s work offers a blueprint for reimagining identity in contexts of systemic oppression, asserting cinema’s capacity to forge counter-cartographies of resistance. The research contributes a framework to analyze how adaptation, as process rather than product, enables subaltern agency in contested landscapes, urging scholars to expand methodologies beyond textual analysis to include embodied, collective, and insurgent memory practices.
The article looks at the intricate system of power that includes inter alia, physical, internal, and digital borders, which shape the mobility and access to rights of Afghan refugees and migrants in Iran. We find not only new but also innovative technologies which Afghan migrants and brightness makers are engaged in. Topics we will discuss include the contribution of social media networks, encrypted messaging apps, and online advocacy networks as the safe haven for the organization. These channels were found to help the audience in defending their rights, collecting evidence, and overcoming the tight policy environment. For example, the study investigates the channel of migrants using digital infrastructural technology to bolster transnational solidarity even in the face of greater national and technological barriers.
Keywords: Afghan migrants, Iran, digital borders, migration technology, surveillance, resistance.
Iran’s Afghan migration has been the center of discussions concerning racialized surveillance and migration governance and thereby it brings the issue of ethnic and money mowing out through the medium of digital manners. To this end, the article accentuates the significance of chuckling’s network during the times of surveillance and just governance. The usage of the new technology in controlling the movement of caseless migrants is shown to have both an oppressive and liberating effect on them and thus points to the fact that the technology should be a central concern for the empowerment of marginalized migrants.
This article examines the current politics around decolonialism, migration, and borders by exmaining the spatial patterns of Hasidic Jews, a group which practices a similar way of life across various countries. This group exhibits a form of diaspora urbanism in that members are constantly moving between parallel communities across the US, Asia, and Europe. In their radical eschewing of modern society and refusal to integrate into the countries around them, this group has previously been looked at within a decolonial lens as resisting the hegemony of western liberal values. But despite being tangibly impacted by the ability to migrate and often seeing themselves as immigrants, the group’s electoral patterns skew towards right-wing parties which promote illiberal anti-migration and anti-Arab policies. This gets at a contradiction whereby a group that benefits from liberalism’s religious and cultural tolerance — and the ability to move across borders — openly rebels against those particular values as part of an anti-establishment ethos. In this sense, a group which might be seen through a decolonial lens supports larger forces that make their way of life impossible. This paper examines the effectiveness of the decolonial lens towards understanding these contradictions not only for this group but also for the current politics of xenophobia, liberalism, and migration more broadly.
Technology is crucial in enabling diasporic communities to sustain cultural and religious identities beyond territorial boundaries. This study explores how Syriac Orthodox youth utilize social media and digital platforms to maintain their ethno-religious and ethno-cultural heritage, fostering a transnational sense of belonging in a world where digital tools transcend physical borders.
The Syriacs, the first community to collectively adopt Christianity, faced forced migration from their ancestral homeland, Midyat (southeastern Turkey), in the 1990s. This displacement reshaped their ties to their homeland and accelerated their diasporization. While technology is often seen as a force of cultural erosion, this research examines its role in intergenerational transmission. Through digital media analysis and ethnographic research, it investigates how online prayers, language courses, virtual religious gatherings, and diaspora-led forums reinforce Syriac identity. Even without physical return, young Syriacs utilize digital tools to stay connected to their roots, demonstrating that cultural continuity is no longer confined to geographic proximity. By eliminating spatial limitations, digital platforms create spaces where identity is redefined beyond physical constraints. This study employs semi-structured interviews with religious leaders in Midyat and systematic data analysis of digital platforms in North America, Australia, and Europe. It contributes to diasporization and return debates, illustrating how digital engagement reshapes cultural preservation. Highlighting the role of technology in diaspora, identity, and resilience, this research demonstrates how digital platforms empower marginalized communities to safeguard traditions, fostering a sense of belonging that extends beyond traditional spatial boundaries.
Technology is crucial in enabling diasporic communities to sustain cultural and religious identities beyond territorial boundaries. This study explores how Syriac Orthodox youth utilize social media and digital platforms to maintain their ethno-religious and ethno-cultural heritage, fostering a transnational sense of belonging in a world where digital tools transcend physical borders. The Syriacs, the first community to collectively adopt Christianity, faced forced migration from their ancestral homeland, Midyat (southeastern Turkey), in the 1990s. This displacement reshaped their ties to their homeland and accelerated their diasporization. While technology is often seen as a force of cultural erosion, this research examines its role in intergenerational transmission. Through digital media analysis and ethnographic research, it investigates how online prayers, language courses, virtual religious gatherings, and diaspora-led forums reinforce Syriac identity. Even without physical return, young Syriacs utilize digital tools to stay connected to their roots, demonstrating that cultural continuity is no longer confined to geographic proximity. By eliminating spatial limitations, digital platforms create spaces where identity is redefined beyond physical constraints. This study employs semi-structured interviews with religious leaders in Midyat and systematic data analysis of digital platforms in North America, Australia, and Europe. It contributes to diasporization and return debates, illustrating how digital engagement reshapes cultural preservation. Highlighting the role of technology in diaspora, identity, and resilience, this research demonstrates how digital platforms empower marginalized communities to safeguard traditions, fostering a sense of belonging that extends beyond traditional spatial boundaries.