Interview with Trine Rask Nielsen, the first author of the paper “Who Cares About Data? Ambivalence, Translation and Attentiveness in Asylum Casework” awarded the 2023 David B. Martin Best Paper Award during ECSCW 2023.
EUSSET: Trine, your paper “Who Cares About Data? Ambivalence, Translation, and Attentiveness in Asylum Casework” co-authored by Maria Menendez-Blanco and Naja Holten Møller was awarded the 2022 David B. Martin Best Paper Award during ECSCW 2023 – congratulations! Your paper builds upon an empirical, ethnographic study in the context of asylum system, a topic that is particularly important in the current, insecure times. Could you tell us a bit more about the background to this paper? Why did you focus on care in casework in your study?
Trine: Investigating asylum decision-making in a European context calls for a broader understanding of the politics and realities people face. The paper reports on an ethnographic study set up in a Danish context. However, as part of this project it was important for us to develop a sensitivity towards the asylum context. As part of the overall research project DATA4ALL, Naja went to Greece to understand how data travels. Maria (Assistant Professor at The Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) is based in Italy. Both countries are considered as important routes for asylum seekers. Others before us engaged with the asylum- and refugee context, including Vasilis Vlachokyriakos (Associate professor at Newcastle University). This shaped how we ended up approaching the overall research project. When we initially embarked on this research, the exploration of the concept of care or its incorporation into our analysis was not included in our original plan. However, as we began conducting interviews and observations to gather background information about the Danish asylum system, we swiftly recognized the significance of care within the casework context. We wanted to contribute to CSCW-agendas that are looking for ways to responsibly investigate sensitive contexts.
EUSSET: How would you summarize the main points of the paper to someone new to your work?
Trine: We show in this paper how care as an aspect of data work can be important for the case documentation. In the case of Danish asylum decision-making, the main setting for data production is interviews with the Immigration Service that can last up to 7 to 8 hours. However, the data produced through these interviews are co-constructed with, for example, data from NGOs, data and records from other countries, policy-informed background data, and/or data from the applicant’s mobile technologies and social media. And this is where care comes into the picture. A main point in this paper is, that we as CSCW-scholars, need to broaden our understanding of the sites for data production as distributed. Our findings suggest that we need to take into account the role of NGOs in supporting asylum seekers and how relational aspects of casework shape data and the quality of case documentation. Care is enacted by asylum caseworkers in moments of ambivalence, translation, and attentiveness to “new substantial information”. These are relational aspects of casework, so to speak, that are enacted in the situated process where caseworkers care that asylum seekers know how to navigate the system. It impacts the production of data about the asylum seeker. So, we suggest that, if we are to design care technologies for supporting displaced individuals to navigate the asylum procedure, this system should make room for these relational aspects of data work – at both authority and NGO levels.
EUSSET: What would you say were the main challenges to conducting this kind of empirical studies? Any lessons learned that you might want to share?
Trine: From the very beginning it was important for us to establish a cooperation with the Danish stakeholders, including NGOs and authorities. My role in the DATA4ALL project is to conduct ethnographic field studies of casework (we also have another PhD student, Kristin Kaltenhäuser, who is a data scientist, working on combining datasets within the project). In general, gaining access to study a non-public and complex asylum work setting is a bit of a challenge. Much of the work of gaining access concerned explaining the aims of our research while negotiating with the Danish Immigration Service and the NGOs our presence in their work. This access negotiation took various forms, such as reaching out to already trusted contacts, back-and-forth e-mails, phone calls, informal face-to-face conversations, interviews, etc. In the end, we negotiated access to conduct long-term field studies at the Danish Red Cross at a departure center and at the Danish Refugee Council as well as interviews at the Danish Immigration Service. For me personally, I encountered challenging and highly emotional experiences. These experiences involved among others grappling with the difficulty of not being able to make a difference for both asylum seekers and caseworkers and I often felt like an intruder when observing their very intense meetings. Managing these intense emotions became a significant aspect of my research process.
EUSSET: …and what are the positive experiences you have made in the field?
Trine: When I gained access to these field sites, I experienced, from the very first day, how the caseworkers I observed and interviewed generously shared their work practices and experiences with me. This was a very positive experience and for that, I am truly grateful.
EUSSET: The paper makes an interesting contribution concerning the role of care in asylum data work. This makes it related to the recent uptake of machine learning, natural language processing, and data science. What are your thoughts concerning the chances and risks related to approaching complex social process based on automatic processing of data?
Trine: We are very well aware that when it comes to approaching complex social processes through automatic data processing, there are risks to consider. This is an aspect, which we have discussed across the DATA4ALL project from the very beginning. Our project also counts several legal scholars, specializing in asylum decision-making. I don’t think there are many conducting research within this domain that would assume that data produced about asylum seekers are inherently objective. In fact, the premise of the research project is to compare large-scale decision data across countries and use Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and so on to understand this phenomenon, since the international law that applies is the same. The ethnographic study then becomes important to raise questions to the data and promote data literacy and ethics among both scholars and practitioners, such as the caseworker we encountered in this study. In this sense, we don’t have a goal of “designing” as some would expect. Little is known about the data production that takes place outside the formal asylum interviews, which is why, we in this paper turn our attention to the relational aspects of data production. We argue that examining care as a relational aspect of data work is crucial, when the asylum system is becoming more data-driven, distributed, and based on increasingly restrictive policies. We argue for a focus on care because the political structural conditions that are shaping casework today are also shaping the development of new data-driven technology. Overall, it is crucial to approach the application of data-driven technologies in asylum casework with caution.
EUSSET: Finally, is this a line of research that you will continue to pursue, or will you now shift to something completely different?
Trine: The DATA4ALL project will continue into 2024. In the CSCW and HCI research communities, scholars have pursued this agenda in important ways. I am deeply interested in continuing to pursue research in this field, specifically focusing on supporting data infrastructure literacy from a CSCW perspective within asylum casework. The use of data and data-driven technologies in this context is multifaceted, as it can be both a part of the problem and a part of the solution. In this context, I think it is crucial to explore how the power of data can be utilized to empower the marginalized of our society. So, I want to continue this kind of research by critically examining data practices, addressing the possibilities for broadening the general understanding of how data and documentation are produced, and recognizing the limitations of data representation. This way, I hope to contribute to a more equitable and inclusive approach to data-driven decision-making in asylum casework and beyond. We invite you to follow our work at our lab’s website: www.confrontingdata.dk.
EUSSET: Is there something you want to share with the members of the community?
Trine: We all 3 would like to express our gratitude to the ECSCW community – we are truly honored that you selected our paper to win the David B. Martin Best Paper Award. At present, we are deeply disturbed by the news of the recent disaster in Greece, where a refugee boat sank, resulting in a significant loss of life. This tragic event emphasizes the urgency of examining asylum as a collective European issue. In relation to the paper, we want to take this opportunity to express our immense gratitude to the people working at the Danish Red Cross, the Danish Refugee Council, and the Danish Immigration Service who participated in our study and generously shared their work practices and experiences with us. It is at times very complicated for them to contribute to this kind of research in a politicized context such as asylum. Our deepest appreciation also, of course, goes to the people having to live at the return center and the people seeking counselling, who allowed me to observe their meetings with the Danish Red Cross and the Danish Refugee Council.
The interview was conducted by Mateusz Dolata
