Refugee Aid 3.0: Seeking Infrastructure Justice

Major humanitarian organisations are using untested new digital technologies to deliver aid to refugees. My work examines the social and political implications of these experiments. I focus on a United Nations project using the database technology blockchain, coupled with biometric identity checks, to provide Syrian refugees in Jordan with basic needs like food and cash.

I use ethnographic methods, which means spending time with people to understand how they think about and work with technology in their everyday lives. In my PhD, I compare how the project is understood and experienced by decision-makers in major institutions (the World Food Programme and UN Women), by aid workers in refugee camps, and by refugees themselves.

Very little research has been done on blockchain's implications for real people, least of all Syrian refugee women living in poverty, under government surveillance, and with restricted rights. When humanitarian agencies adopt blockchain, how does it affect the delivery of aid to refugees? How do refugee women incorporate blockchain payments into their everyday financial routines?

The agencies and tech companies promoting blockchain promise that it will improve humanitarian aid, but does it?

In this postdoctoral fellowship, I will focus on producing publications and organising workshops to connect researchers, aid industry decision-makers, and refugee rights activists.

First, I will publish my doctoral study as a book. The book will give a rounded, detailed picture of the places and people involved in making and using experimental technology. It will unpick how blockchain-promoted as an efficient way of cutting out middlemen such as banks-in fact introduces new middlemen and encourages the privatisation of aid.

The book will be an accessible guide to blockchain and digital inequality, brought to life through human stories I spent four years gathering. It will be a major contribution to knowledge about aid and refugees and the socio-political implications of digital technology.

Second, I will publish an article with a top-ranking, peer-reviewed journal, about Syrian refugee women's experiences with blockchain, and their Islamic cultural conceptualisation of it. With the analysis of religious and gender dynamics, the article will balance colourful detail from my Jordan fieldwork with a strong theoretical contribution that pushes forward understandings of blockchain.

Blockchain is widely misconceived as a neutral social development tool. I will bust this myth and show how it is entrenching socio-economic inequality in Jordan, and refugee women are contesting its imposition on their difficult lives.

Third, I will organise a workshop series, accompanied by a public-facing research brief. My work has the potential for significant impact beyond academia. I have gathered exclusive evidence on the impacts of blockchain at global margins, and in doing so I have created excellent networks among aid industry policymakers and practitioners, civil society activists, and refugee organisations, as well as academics in several disciplines.

The workshops will engage non-academic and academic participants to push forward an agenda for research and action on refugees' digital rights. The new connections and insights from the workshop and research brief will kickstart my future career conducting research at the forefront of humanitarian innovation.

Finally, to build on my networks in aid, tech, and academia, I will visit the top research centre on digital justice, the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society, and attend the leading international conference for digital rights, RightsCon. The fellowship will allow me to undertake strategic training to complement my planned activities: the manuscript development course (online, 'Manuscript Works') will formalise my skills base in preparation for a prolific and impactful academic career.