382 Digital Privacy Perceptions of Asylum Seekers in Germany An Empirical Study about Smartphone Usage during the Flight ENNO STEINBRINK, LILIAN REICHERT, MICHELLE MENDE, and CHRISTIAN REUTER, Technical University of Darmstadt, Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC), Germany Since 2015, an increased number of asylum seekers is coming to Europe. These migration movements increas- ingly rely on digital infrastructure, such as mobile internet access and online services, in order to reach their targeted destination countries. Asylum seekers often use smartphones for information and communication purposes. Even though there are many positive aspects in the use of such technologies, researchers have to consider the perceived risks of this specific user group. This work aims at investigating the use of mobile information technologies by asylum seekers during their flight, especially taking privacy into account. Thus, it examines asylum seekers’ digital privacy perceptions and identifies privacy protection behaviors by conducting a qualitative interview study with 14 asylum seekers who applied for asylum in Germany. The results show that asylum seekers are often aware of the various risks deriving from the use of smartphones and ICT, such as surveillance and persecution by state or non-state actors as well as extortion by criminals. Based on this, this work furthermore outlines different strategies used to manage these risks. Since the lack of privacy and trust leads to avoidance behavior, the insights of this study provide valuable information for the design of assistance apps and collaboration platforms, which appropriately address the specific needs for digital privacy in the context of flight, or for the conception of privacy-enhancing technologies helping to achieve this. CCS Concepts: • Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy;• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI ; Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing. Additional Key Words and Phrases: digital privacy; ICT; smartphones; social media; refugees; migration ACM Reference Format: Enno Steinbrink, Lilian Reichert, Michelle Mende, and Christian Reuter. 2021. Digital Privacy Perceptions of Asylum Seekers in Germany: An Empirical Study about Smartphone Usage during the Flight. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2, Article 382 (October 2021), 24 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479526 1 INTRODUCTION Due to the large number of political tensions and intensified by the conflict in Syria, the number of asylum seekers in Europe has been increased over the past years. In 2015, the number of asylum seekers more than doubled to 1,255,600 initial applications in member states of the European Union (EU), of which 35% – more than a third – applied for asylum in Germany. This represented an increase of 155% compared to the year before [17]. Although the number of asylum applications in Germany is declining since 2018, refugee and migration flows remain a challenge for German as well as European politics. The continual conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and in many other countries cause that the flow of refugees is not likely to abate anytime soon. In this article, we refer to the term ‘asylum seekers’ as people who have submitted an application for Authors’ address: Enno Steinbrink, [email protected]; Lilian Reichert; Michelle Mende; Christian Reuter, [email protected], Technical University of Darmstadt, Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC), Pankratiusstrasse 2, 64289, Darmstadt, Germany. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. 2573-0142/2021/10-ART382 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3479526 Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 5, No. CSCW2, Article 382. Publication date: October 2021.
Digital Privacy Perceptions of Asylum Seekers in Germany
Jul 11, 2023
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