Data Privacy and Displacement: A Cultural Approach SASKIA WITTEBORN School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Hong Kong switteborn@gmail.com MS received July 2019; revised MS received December 2019 Recent research has pointed to the increasing impact of digitally derived data on forced migration processes, including legal mechanisms for accessing social media profiles of asylum seekers. These developments raise the issue of data privacy, spe- cifically how asylum seekers understand data privacy and protect their data. This article pays particular attention to cultural variants of data privacy. Culture, here, refers to a communication culture linked to displacement, with safety as a key code and variant of data privacy. For the asylum seekers and refugees from South(east) Asia, the Middle East and African nations, safety was a concern in daily digital practice. Safety was a relational way of being, exercised through selective contacts and playful presentations of the self. Those presentations were deeply embedded in the logics of social media and stood in contrast to narratives of persecution, poten- tially posing problems for asylum claim determination in the future. Based on the lack of awareness of asylum seekers about data privacy and safety, a data safety workshop was designed, available on GitHub. Keywords: communication culture, data and information privacy, forced migration, social media, safety, training Introduction Digital footprints have become increasingly important in the aggregation of digital identities, including those of forced migrants. In 2017, Belgium, Denmark and Germany tightened laws, with immigration officers now having the right to access mobile phones and social media profiles of asylum claimants to extract data (Jumpert et al. 2018; Meaker 2018). This practice is already in place in the UK and in Norway and serves two main purposes: to verify claim- ants’ identities and as a security background check (Jumpert et al. 2018). As early as 2011, Privacy International voiced concerns about data privacy in refugee camps in Malaysia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya. Lack of transpar- ency about data management and the fact that the UNHCR has to share data with multiparty stakeholders support the concerns of refugees that their Journal of Refugee Studies Vol. 34, No. 2 V C The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com doi:10.1093/jrs/feaa004 Advance Access Publication 12 March 2020 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article/34/2/2291/5804142 by KIM Hohenheim user on 25 April 2022