These community-led and community-oriented infrastructures are built around ethics of support, providing aspiring international students with the agency to negotiate with information asymmetry present in infrastructure deployed by the state and other high education institutions.[53] Examples include WhatsApp and Facebook groups. These groups are more accessible, though in some cases, membership relies on existing social and economic capital. Instances such as ‘Study in Germany’ Facebook and WhatsApp groups highlight their function, which provides constant support throughout the different phases of the journey with discussions of the pros and cons of Germany, the various types of universities in Germany, the admission requirements, and employment outcomes.[55] These groups have also been more successful in providing localized knowledge and specific information about visa officers and organizing of important papers and finances. Some members offer 1-on-1 assistance and support for a small fee—resembling traditional consultants—and also have YouTube channels, where they provide insights into the lifestyle and experience of living in Germany.[56] The groups thus create an accessible network that helps provide new information through national networks, which aid integration (for example, insurance, permits, accommodation, etc.). The different infrastructures are much more inclusive not only in terms of the kind of information they provide but also in other mediums of communication. The networks these groups create become a way of democratising aspiration and knowledge by making information more accessible which may have been previously gatekept.[57] The information it provides helps overcome apprehension and isolation created by administrative systems, leading to increasing mobility for people who may have not been able to access it in the past.

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Unpacking each of these migration digital infrastructures shows how it produces data assemblages that can be combined—with their intentions and analytical frameworks—forming a migration infrastructure with a stronger technological capacity. The infrastructure created by the systems consists largely of state institutions with limited presence of private actors and works with the intent of not just establishing ground truth about flows of people but profiling, forecasting, and conceptualising migration.[58] Thus, power in the systems emerges with the state institutions through the generation of data, control of access to data, and the merging of various data, but also through their analysis and interpretation.[59] The international student who continues to occupy the category of the user becomes a data subject whose rights are dependent upon their behaviour within the digital infrastructure. Moreover, the lack of knowledge about the systems and the creation of the opaque infrastructure offers minimal visibility to international students into how their data is being processed.[60] Thus creating vulnerabilities in the form of the inability to protect themselves from the negative effects of imposed visibility and action from these entities.

53. Jayadeva Interview

54. Jayadeva, Sazana. “Keep Calm and Apply to Germany: How Online Communities Mediate Transnational Student Mobility from India to Germany.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46, no. 11 (2020): 2240–57. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2019.1643230.

55. Jayadeva, Sazana. “Keep Calm and Apply to Germany: How Online Communities Mediate Transnational Student Mobility from India to Germany.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46, no. 11 (2020): 2240–57. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2019.1643230.

56. Jayadeva, Sazana. “Keep Calm and Apply to Germany: How Online Communities Mediate Transnational Student Mobility from India to Germany.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46, no. 11 (2020): 2240–57. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2019.1643230.