ResTech as remedy: Why migration management could use additional support

Rohan Pai, Nandini Jiva

As of June 2024, nearly 117.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide due to persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. State institutions, multilaterals and humanitarian organisations that are responsible for managing people on the move were stretched thin, often lacking the resources to respond to unanticipated crises. Phone connectivity and internet infrastructure helped people on the move discover essential services and information through initiatives that cater specifically to the needs of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Refugee.Info, an initiative launched by the International Rescue Committee and Mercy Corps in 2015 during the European refugee crisis, is a digital platform designed to respond directly to the needs of refugees arriving in Greece. It provides legal aid, healthcare, education, and employment and details on the various services offered to refugees and asylum seekers in Greece by public authorities. The application helped refugees and asylum seekers access accurate, regularly updated information in multiple languages, on pathways and protections under EU migration law for temporary and long-term residence in the country. The initiative has expanded over the last decade, providing similar services to nearly 60 million people in Ukraine and other war-affected regions globally. Similarly, pardesi.org.np is an information portal for Nepali immigrants, returnees and their family members that was developed in collaboration with migrant organisations in the country. The portal provides a user-friendly interface to navigate information on foreign employment, legal rights, healthcare, education and training services.

What is ResTech?

Initiatives such as RefugeeInfo and Pardesi represent a stark departure from how  technology is usually deployed to manage the movement of people across borders, designed in restrictive and rigid ways that prioritise ostensible national security concerns over safety and rights of migrants. Often underpinned by stringent law enforcement measures and surveillance infrastructure to restrict movement, these ‘digital walls’ are meant to serve as migration control mechanisms, compelling migrants to journey through increasingly unsafe and dubious routes. Within such a context, Refugee Info and Pardesi stand as testament to what a renewed imagination of migration technology could look like when designed to function as systems of care - responding to essential needs and providing necessary support to navigate an unfamiliar, and often terrifying journey.

Through our research, we identified 50 such community-oriented migration technology initiatives that not only provide essential services and information like Refugee Info and Pardesi, but also offer education and skilling, resettlement, legal and advocacy services, healthcare, cultural integration and emergency services. Referred to as ResTech (Resilient/ Resistance/ Responsible/ Responsive Technologies), we developed a framework that helps define what sets these technologies apart from those deployed by state and multilateral actors to manage human mobility. To build on this concept, we developed a repository that taxonomises rudimentary information about each ResTech, followed by an analysis of their technology architecture, status of compliance to privacy regulations and funding landscape.

What role does ResTech play in the migration technology ecosystem?

Recognising the role of ResTech within the migration ecosystem is crucial to uncover how they address the shortcomings of institutional (state and multilateral) infrastructure. For instance, reporting from Oxfam suggests migrants and refugees are often mistreated by law enforcement officials at the European borders, with violence and intimidation deployed to deny access to legal asylum procedures. Even UNDESA’s research on refugee social integration within Europe highlights that post migratory stresses, delays in the application process, conflicts with immigration officials, denial of work permits, unemployment, and separation from families are commonly observed among asylum seekers. 

In Figure 1 below, an evaluation of the sectors that ResTech operates in shows how they are highly skewed towards ‘Essential Services’—emerging during crises to tackle information asymmetry and assist people on the move with guidance about safe routes, legal aid and protection.

Figure 1

This trend highlights two key insights:

1. Communities and initiatives mobilising on-ground during crises recognise that there is a strong requirement to create networks that provide reliable information for people on the move—this ranges from emergency support, healthcare and basic connectivity to legal pathways for asylum-seeking in the receiving country, education and employment opportunities. This is increasingly facilitated through digital means via smartphones, and complemented by efforts at seeking trustworthy sources of information online, in the absence of support from institutional infrastructure.

2. The policy objectives of states, multilaterals and other institutions involved in migration management are overindexed on state security and deterrence of immigration. As a result, institutional infrastructures are disincentivised to provide support to vulnerable communities during crises and fall short in addressing the needs of people on the move.

Within these prevailing conditions, we have observed that ResTech works in the shadow of institutional infrastructure. Supplementing state, multilateral and humanitarian efforts that operate at larger scale and capacity, ResTech initiatives are community-oriented efforts that provide essential support when institutional mechanisms fail to provide international protection and access to fair and effective asylum procedures. This encourages us to evaluate why ResTech is more effective in meeting the demands of people on the move during a crisis—raising questions about how the build, deployment and governance of these technologies differ from institutional infrastructure.

What sets ResTech apart?

A factor that distinguishes ResTech from institutional infrastructure is the intention behind the design and development of said technologies. For instance, citing the European refugee crisis in 2015, Perkowski, Stierl, and Burridge unpack  the underlying narrative that determines how EU member states tackle irregular movements. People crossing into EU borders, seeking refuge and asylum are viewed as “invasions from chaotic, unruly ‘problem-spaces’”, resulting in the legitimisation of “surveilling, monitoring, and patrolling of the pre-frontier area, fueling policies, and practices of externalization”. The recent executive orders from the White House strike a similar chord, referring to immigrants as “illegal aliens”. These precarious positions are consequently reflected in the policy objectives of states, effectively leading to the predominance of surveillance infrastructure that is designed to restrict access and deter inflows of people that belong to certain communities. 

On the other hand, the political economy within which multilateral and humanitarian organisations work, hinders their ability to operate outside the stated agenda of major donors such as the USA and EU that are responsible for more than 50% of development and humanitarian donations worldwide. As a result, even though the impact of institutional infrastructure in tackling crises cannot be overstated, their actions are bound by the policy priorities of donor states in ways that restrict multilateral and humanitarian actors from addressing the needs of people on the move.

Integrating ResTech with institutional infrastructure

Within such an environment, through support from policymakers and investors, ResTech can serve as a people-centric, rights-preserving alternative—providing migrants with greater agency over their digital realities. 

As a first step, it is important for actors in the migration technology ecosystem to recognise and encourage ResTech initiatives by shifting the attention of donors and investors towards these efforts, and building a strong case  to demonstrate the effectiveness of these systems in addressing the shortcomings of institutional infrastructure. Our taxonomy is one such effort aimed at embedding the terminology and raising awareness about the technology and governance features of ResTech.

Additionally, limitations posed by state and multilateral policy objectives aside, building pathways for ResTech to operate alongside institutional infrastructure for migration management can enable people on the move to seek assistance through additional channels—reducing burdens on development and humanitarian apparatus in the process. These could be forged through migration law and policy recognising the role of ResTech within the technology ecosystem, fostering collaborations through public-private partnerships aimed at migrant welfare and encouraging investments in ResTech. 

It’s safe to say that embedding ResTech within the migration ecosystem would not only serve the interests of people on the move, but also of states, multilateral and humanitarian actors. By recognising ResTech and creating legitimate pathways for it to work in tandem with institutional infrastructure, migration management could serve twin objectives of state security and protection of people on the move.