Self-Sovereignty for Refugees? The Contested Horizons of Digital Identity

Bibliographic Data

ID3948939
AuthorsMargie Cheesman (0000-0001-9521-4658, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume27
Issue1
Pages134-159
Publication date2022-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2020.1823836
OpenAlexW3090713708
LanguageEN
Citations received48
References cited47

This paper critically examines the implications of ‘self-sovereign identity’ (SSI) for border politics and migration management. SSI refers to user-controlled, decentralised forms of digital identification. Closely linked with the distributed ledger technology blockchain, SSI is presented by advocates as a tool to empower marginalised groups, including refugees. Among other benefits, some claim that SSI removes the need for powerful, centralised institutional structures by giving individuals control and ownership of their identity information. However, through ethnographic research in an international aid organisation, I find that SSI is an embryonic technology with indeterminate properties and benefits. I identify a series of competing logics in the debates around SSI’s emancipatory potential, which relate to four issues: (i) the neutrality of the technology, (ii) the capacities of refugees, (iii) global governance and the nation state, and (iv) new economic models for digital identity. SSI is simultaneously the potential enabler of new modes of empowerment, autonomy and data security for refugees and a means of maintaining and extending bureaucratic and commercial power. I situate SSI in a genealogy of systems of identity control and argue that, in practice, it is likely to feed into the powers of corporations and states over refugee populations

Autonomy · Bureaucracy · Corporate governance · Economics · Empowerment · Management · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Refugee · Sociology · Sovereignty · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · European Criminal Justice and Data Protection · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Public Administration

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