Our study on the Philippines examines the nexus between data, disasters, and the resulting displacement within the country. The journey of those displaced, towards safety as well as social protection, is examined by assessing the effectiveness of digital public infrastructure (DPI) in the country: through the PhilSys (digital ID), the digital payment providers in the country, and the disaster data sharing ecosystem and its governance in the disaster management cycle. The study analyses this ecosystem by highlighting alternative, bottom-up approaches to disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) efforts that emerge from local capacities and aspirations. It offers stakeholder-specific recommendations for participation in DRRM and social protection.

South Africa’s expanding digital public infrastructure intersects with complex migration flows in ways that fundamentally shape access to rights, services and protection for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants from across the African continent. This research investigates how digital identity systems interact with broader institutional data flows, which actors control access at different stages of migration and how communities navigate, contest or build alternatives when formal systems exclude them. By tracing data movements between government agencies, humanitarian organisations, private sector actors and civil society, we illuminate both the exclusions produced by datafied migration management and the possibilities for more participatory, rights-respecting digital governance.

Protecting IDPs in the face of threats from natural disasters and livelihood challenges

As part of ongoing research for phase II of Data on the Move, we were in the Philippines during the last week of July 2025.

Border infrastructure worldwide has increasingly become reliant on machine learning, big data, automated decision-making, predictive analytics and digital technologies. Advanced AI tools are currently used across a range of applications deployed across the entire migration cycle; from profiling and identifying people on the move, to predicting migration flows and surveilling border crossing points. While these technologies are deployed ostensibly to solve border management challenges, they also raise significant concerns around transparency, data protection, and risks to fundamental rights.

This blog builds on our earlier piece, Data on the Move: Tracing Risks and Rights within Migration Digital Infrastructure, which laid out the evolving role of digital systems in shaping the rights and risks of people on the move. Building on that framing, we now outline our approach to operationalising this inquiry through case study research. Our methodology centres on studying specific migration corridors where digital infrastructure - such as identity systems, payment platforms, and data-sharing mechanisms - is actively reshaping how rights are accessed or denied. This allows us to examine both the technological and political dimensions of digitalisation in migration governance.

In 2015, in the aftermath of regional conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, approximately 1.3 million people migrated in the hope of better living conditions to member states of the European Union, UK, Norway and Switzerland. The resulting refugee crisis led to stricter legislation for asylum-seekers, propping up formidable enclosures such as the new European Border and Coast Guard (EBCGA–Frontex) that was supported by a whopping 245 million euros in budget allocations.

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.

For states and multilateral actors, the design intent behind technologies is to manage and predict migration patterns and trends, representing a ‘top-down’ approach to migration management. For communities and other humanitarian actors, the design intent shifts to a migrant-centric approach rooted in serving community needs and centring migrant voices in building and deploying technologies for migration. We have unpacked this divergence in our case study on community-oriented technologies, which we term ResTech.

The way in which digital and data systems in global human migration have impacted migratory journeys, discourse, and policy is manifold. Such emerging infrastructures have become significant markers for states to know, predict, and manage migration. The status quo, as we know it, is a dance of data being tossed around amongst ecosystem players: from states to multilaterals, from private enterprises to other commercial entities. This data is moulded and remoulded to cater to a variety of uses, creating a tapestry of data assemblages. These assemblages are bundles of data that can be shuffled to understand migration patterns through varied stakeholder lenses, whether to drive policymaking, or to build technologies to better surveil migrants. All things considered, migration technologies are ‘top-down’ in their approach and are reduced to managing a spectacle of numbers, often failing to account for the diversity in migrant experiences and journeys.