On Data and Care in Migration Contexts

Abstract

The commentary provides the reader with several genealogies of data and care, key themes that underpin the theorisation, as well as the methodological and ethical operationalisation of a more caring digital migration studies described in this book. By doing that, it shows how pursuing careful data engagement allows understanding and reflection on the “ambivalence and shifting tensions” inherent in care-technology relations. The genealogies discussed show how neither migration nor data nor care are singular totalities but co-exist with limits and paradoxes. This is furthermore important when a caring perspective on data in migration studies is more and more relevant. This relevance is seen as a response to the recent trend of seeing migration as a laboratory where experiments with big data can be conducted and the overarching data ideology that depicts migrations as something that can be controlled through more or better data without having to come to terms with underpinning large-scale historical, socio-cultural, geo-political and economic concerns.