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Open access
Research article
First published online December 25, 2022
DO INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICTS) SUPPORT SELF-RELIANCE AMONG
URBAN REFUGEES? EVIDENCE FROM KUALA LUMPUR AND PENANG, MALAYSIA
Charles Martin-Shields https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1039-5208
Charles.Martin-Shields@die-gdi.de and Katrina Munir-AsenView all authors and
affiliations
Volume 58, Issue 1
https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183221139277
* Contents
* Abstract
* Introduction
* Kuala Lumpur and Penang: Refugee Contexts of Limbo and Survival
* Self-Reliance: A Framework for Understanding ICTs in Refugees’ Daily Lives
* ICTs and Refugees: Linking Technology and Self-Reliance
* Methodology
* Results
* Conclusions
* Declaration of Conflicting Interests
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* ORCID iD
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ABSTRACT
Organizations working with refugees are increasingly using information
communication technologies (ICTs) in their work. While there is a rich
literature in the field of media and communications studies exploring how
refugees use ICTs to meet their social and economic needs, this article focuses
on whether and how refugees’ ICT use maps onto the policy concept of refugee
self-reliance, focusing on the economic, educational, administrative, health,
and security/protection domains of self-reliance in informal urban settings.
Building on the literature on refugees’ ICT use, we use semi-structured
interviews with urban refugees in Malaysia to understand how they use technology
in their daily lives and whether these refugees’ digital practices support
self-reliance. We also interviewed practitioners from the Malaysian United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office and non-governmental organization
(NGO) sectors to better understand such institutions’ strategies for using ICTs
to deliver economic, educational, administrative, health, and protection
programs in local refugee communities. Our findings are twofold: refugees’ use
of ICTs represented idiosyncratic ways of achieving self-reliance, but when
institutions tried to implement ICT solutions to support refugee self-reliance
at a population level, refugees either did not use these ICT solutions or were
critical of the institutional solutions. The findings presented here have import
for not only research on refugee self-reliance and ICTs but also the wider
migration field, as organizations, such as the International Organization for
Migration and national immigration authorities, integrate ICTs into processes
that affect migrants’ and displaced peoples’ economic, social, and political
inclusion in cities of arrival.
INTRODUCTION
Information communication technologies (ICTs) are an increasingly ubiquitous
part of daily life for urban refugees (e.g., GSMA 2017; Patil 2019; Eppler et
al. 2020; Dressa 2021). Urban refugees and displaced people use ICTs to meet
individual administrative, social, or emotional needs, or what technology and
media scholars call “affordances” (e.g., Faraj and Azad 2012).1 In this article,
we extend the concept of affordances, or individual-level uses of ICTs, to the
refugee policy level, using an empirical framework based on the concept of
refugee self-reliance in urban settings. Self-reliance is particularly salient
for urban refugees since they live outside the formal administration of camp
settings and end up having to meet their own needs through formal and informal
economic and social activities (UNHCR 2009). Extending the concept of
affordances to understand the concept of refugee self-reliance allows us to ask
the question: Do ICT affordances support urban refugees’ self-reliance in Kuala
Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia, a middle-income refugee host country? We used
structured interviews, conducted in 2019, to ask whether refugees living in
Kuala Lumpur and Penang who arrived from Myanmar, Somalia, and Pakistan used
ICTs to support self-reliance across five domains drawn from the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) definition of refugee self-reliance:
economic inclusion (e.g., access to jobs and financial services), accessing
education, finding healthcare, managing administrative processes, and providing
for their own safety in host countries (UNHCR 2005).
Refugees in both high- and low-income host countries around the world could use
ICTs to do these things, and indeed, there is evidence that ICTs improve
refugees’ access to administrative services in high-income resettlement
countries like the United States and New Zealand (e.g., Kabbar and Crump 2007;
Evans, Perry, and Factor 2019). However, in the middle- and low-income
countries, access to public services can be constrained or non-existent, often
due to hostile policy environments and/or a lack of political will.2 In such
contexts, digital technologies have the potential to create opportunities for
urban refugees to establish self-reliance at the community level and to
coordinate more effectively with the UNHCR and local non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). Malaysia provides a context to better understand what the
future of refugees’ self-reliance and digital practices could look like in a
world where refugees spend increasingly long time periods in host countries
awaiting resettlement, while at the same time global refugee response policy is
moving away from refugee encampment and toward local integration (Grant 2016;
Brankamp 2022). Malaysia has no encampment policy, no refugee or asylum
legislation, and a large refugee population (UNHCR Malaysia 2022a). Many
refugees in Malaysia reside in urban enclaves and must meet their social,
economic, and administrative needs either on their own or through
community-based organizations (ibid.). While the UNHCR's local office provides
refugees in Malaysia with as much support as possible, effectively, most
refugees in the country must be self-reliant to survive (UNHCR Malaysia 2022b).
We found that ICTs made it easier for urban refugees in Malaysia to engage in
community- and individual-level aspects of self-reliance, such as participating
in community-organized safety programs and maintaining family/social
connections. However, our findings indicate that ICTs had little effect on
improving refugees’ self-reliance in domains that were closely tied to
host-country laws, such as economic inclusion, or access to public education and
health systems. Our results provide insights into how refugees’ ICT affordances
help them achieve different aspects of self-reliance and add to the growing body
of research on ICT use among urban refugees and migrants by analyzing how
refugees’ ICT affordances align with formal and informal processes of refugee
self-reliance (e.g., Danielson 2013; Martin-Shields et al. 2022). This research
also sheds light on how ICTs fit into the lives of other displaced populations,
such as people displaced by climate change or internally displaced people whose
social safety net is being replaced with self-reliance policies. Thus, our
research speaks to practical challenges and opportunities facing refugee and
immigration authorities that are attempting to use ICTs to engage with and
support displaced populations (e.g., Kluzer and Rissola 2009; Green 2020; IOM
2020).
This article proceeds in this way. We start by introducing Malaysia as a case
and explain why it is relevant for understanding our research question. From
there, we explain what self-reliance is, highlight debates around self-reliance
as a global humanitarian policy, and create a conceptual framework for examining
how ICTs fit into self-reliance activities. We, then, review the literature on
ICTs in refugees’ lives and how ICTs and digitalization have influenced refugee
and humanitarian operations. From here, we move to methods and, then, our
presentation of results, where we draw on our interview data to analyze how
refugees in Malaysia used ICTs to engage in the five domains of self-reliance
mentioned in the opening paragraph. We close this article with reflections on
how our findings speak to the wider field of migration and their importance for
understanding self-reliance in urban migration and displacement.
KUALA LUMPUR AND PENANG: REFUGEE CONTEXTS OF LIMBO AND SURVIVAL
We selected Malaysia for two main reasons. First, Malaysia has a large refugee
population who live in cities and meet their daily survival needs on their own,
with limited help from the UNHCR and local NGOs (Crisp 2012), making refugees in
Malaysia self-reliant by default. The second reason to focus on Malaysia is that
it has a fully developed internet and telecommunication sector; 95 percent of
the population has access to high-speed mobile internet, and 96 percent of
residents own a mobile phone (ITU 2022). Thus, refugees in Malaysia are likely
to engage in the daily activities on which our research focuses, in terms of
both self-reliance and ICT use.
Malaysia is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol and
is, therefore, under no legal obligation to fulfill the protection requirements
of these treaties (UNHCR 2013, 212). Thus, refugees and asylum-seekers in
Malaysia are considered to be irregularly residing in the country, with special
protection entitlements only partially addressed through tacit permission
provided to the UNHCR to operate in the country (Anis 2020). Refugees in
Malaysia are not permitted to work, are unable to access healthcare on the same
basis as nationals, and cannot access public education (Crisp 2012). The de
facto refugee protection space in Malaysia continues to sway between
quasi-permission to stay and explicit pronouncements of illegality, leading to
convoluted messaging and an unpredictable protection environment for refugees
(ibid.). However, informal support systems, propped up by capacity building and
community development initiatives undertaken by the UNHCR and other development
organizations in Malaysia, have created tenable options for refugees who, by
living on the margins, have somewhat progressed in establishing patterns of
self-reliance (ibid., 213).
According to the UNHCR, as of July 2022, Malaysia was host to 184,980 refugees
and asylum-seekers registered with the organization (UNHCR 2022a). A total of
29,601 lived in Kuala Lumpur and 19,737 in Penang, an island state in northern
Malaysia (ibid.). Selangor, the state surrounding the federal territory of Kuala
Lumpur, was home to 70,101 refugees in 2022 (ibid.). UNHCR refugee data are not
reflective of refugees who did not register with the UNHCR, a number which stood
at approximately 80,000 in 2020, according to refugee community groups (Fishbein
and Hkawng 2020). Kuala Lumpur is often where newly arrived refugees first
settle, and refugee-led community organizations have been established within
different Kuala Lumpur enclaves where refugees live (Munir-Asen 2018, 2).
Delineated along ethnic or national lines, these organizations represent
Rohingya, Chin, Myanmar Muslims, Pakistanis, Somalis, Syrians, Sri Lankans,
Palestinians, and other refugee groups in Malaysia (see Table 1 for the current
breakdown of refugees by nationality in Malaysia). Although Penang does not have
the pull of UNHCR offices or more established civil-society organizations,
Rohingya refugees and asylum-seekers have been drawn to the island state's labor
opportunities (Nungsari, Flanders, and Chuah 2020).
Table 1. Current Population Statistics of Refugees in Malaysia by Nationality.
While There are Refugees From 50 Countries Residing in Malaysia, this Table Only
Specifies Refugee Communities With More Than 500 Members in Malaysia.
Country of OriginCommunity
SizeMyanmara1,58,500Pakistana6,760Yemen3,820Syria3,370Somaliaa3,210Afghanistan3,160Sri
Lanka1,570Iraq1,200Palestine780Other2,610TOTAL1,84,980
a
People from this group were interviewed. Source: UNHCR Malaysia (2022a).
Open in viewer
Urban ethnic community organizations play a central role in the initial stages
of refugees’ arrival in Malaysia, assisting with housing, access to community
schools (refugee children cannot access Malaysia's formal education system),
employment opportunities, and referrals to the UNHCR (Munir-Asen 2018, 18–20).
As part of the UNHCR's community-based protection policy, these types of
organizations have benefited from capacity-building exercises to ensure
sustainability, transparency, and efficiency (ibid.). In the Klang Valley, which
includes Kuala Lumpur and central Selangor, there are 159 community focal points
that facilitate contact between the UNHCR and refugee communities themselves
(UNHCR 2017a). The location of UNHCR offices in Kuala Lumpur also makes the city
a natural point of arrival for refugees, who must complete their registration
in-person (UNHCR 2022b).
SELF-RELIANCE: A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING ICTS IN REFUGEES’ DAILY LIVES
Having explained the context of our research, we now move to our conceptual
framework, going into more detail about the concept of refugee self-reliance.
While the UNHCR has generally framed self-reliance broadly (UNHCR 2005, 1; UNHCR
2017b, 3), in practice, refugee self-reliance has often had an implicit or
explicit economic or financial focus (Omata 2017, 3–6). The UNHCR's (2005)
Handbook for Self-Reliance defines self-reliance as
> the social and economic ability of an individual, a household or a community
> to meet essential needs (including protection, food, water, shelter, personal
> safety, health and education) in a sustainable manner and with dignity.
> Self-reliance, as a programme approach, refers to developing and strengthening
> livelihoods of persons of concern, and reducing their vulnerability and
> long-term reliance on humanitarian/external assistance. (ibid., 1)
Since 2005, the concept of self-reliance has become increasingly embedded within
the wider humanitarian/development nexus, as well as within policy frameworks
like the New York Declaration and Global Compact on Refugees (UNHCR 2017b).
While global development and humanitarian policy frameworks have become more
complex and interlinked, with the peacebuilding and development sectors playing
complementary roles in supporting refugees’ self-reliance, the UNHCR's root
concept of self-reliance has not radically changed since 2005. At its core, it
remains focused on creating space for refugees to have the agency and right to
create livelihoods in host communities and to be prepared to take advantage of
durable solutions, including resettlement, voluntary return, or local
integration (ibid.). In urban settings, where legal grey areas around refugee
protection and residence often abound, the UNHCR policy on refugee protection
focuses on self-reliance through access to schooling, post-secondary vocational
training, health services, and a policy of working with governments to create
legal pathways to work status and access to public services (UNHCR 2009). More
recent urban refugee self-reliance activities, though, remain focused on
economic livelihoods and food access (UNHCR 2012).
A consistent criticism of the concept of self-reliance is that in practice, it
represents a push to roll back humanitarian support and replace it with programs
meant to force refugees into the local economy and into income-generating
activities (Easton-Calabria and Omata 2018; Bhagat 2020; Skran and
Easton-Calabria 2020). As Easton-Calabria and Omata (2018) argue, problems with
self-reliance emerge when it takes on a purely economic manifestation,
reflecting donors’ interests in financial exits from long-term refugee
situations, rather than refugees’ interests in leading sustainable, dignified
lives. Bhagat (2020) argues that, in the case of Nairobi, Kenya, refugee
populations became part of a market-based system of self-reliance in which the
state withdrew or withheld support, and refugees were forced into informal
systems of work and housing. Such informality was backstopped by piecemeal
efforts to provide loans to refugees and support refugee entrepreneurship. In
Bhagat's analysis of refugees in Nairobi, the policy space simultaneously
excluded refugees legally while tacitly allowing them to remain in the city if
they could survive without government support. By removing the social safety net
and humanitarian aid and by withholding legal residence status, refugee
self-reliance in Nairobi was reduced to a process of survival in the informal
urban economy.
However, urban settings can also provide the social and economic networks that
urban refugees need to survive and potentially thrive. Campbell (2006), for
example, argues that long-term refugees in Nairobi, especially those who own
established businesses, would be best served by having their resident status
formally recognized, thus opening pathways for them to exercise choice in
medical, educational, and administrative issues. More recent research from
Nairobi shows how local NGOs that provide holistic support services create space
for refugees to meet their initial financial and health needs more efficiently,
leaving them better prepared to live independently after two years (Slaughter
2020).
Refugee self-reliance activities can alternatively be organized within refugee
communities and cover psycho-social, material, and protection needs (Grabska
2006). Pascucci (2017, 340–41) points out, though, that community-based
solutions supporting refugee self-reliance, especially when organized along
ethnic lines, can be exclusionary, citing the example of a Syrian family who was
alone in Cairo and had no community networks to fall back on and only limited
access to formal settlement services. Community organizations also need physical
space to meet their communities’ needs; Field, Tiwari, and Mookherjee (2020)
explain the spatial practice of self-reliance, showing how refugee groups in
Delhi made use of urban space to meet their cultural and social needs. As in the
examples from Nairobi, Cairo, and Delhi, refugees in Malaysia are forced to be
self-reliant since the host government offers no material support to refugees
and since the local UNHCR office has limited programmatic and financial
resources for supporting refugees’ self-reliance activities. Following the
approaches taken by Leung (2011) and, more recently, Lintner (2020), we
understand ICTs as a sociological infrastructure that can facilitate access to
different domains of self-reliance. ICTs provide a potential mechanism for
leveraging individual- and community-level refugee self-reliance and for
connecting those activities with the resources UNHCR and NGOs can provide.
ICTS AND REFUGEES: LINKING TECHNOLOGY AND SELF-RELIANCE
This section links the concept of self-reliance to our empirical question of
whether ICTs support refugee self-reliance in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. In the
introduction, we used the word “affordances” — the things that ICTs allow
individual refugees to do. Affordances could include staying in contact with
family and creating a digital reality that makes day-to-day life tolerable
(Twigt 2018), saving/archiving photos and documentation (Georgiou and Leurs
2022), or making appointments with UNHCR or NGOs, among other things. While
self-reliance can have a number of definitions and while there are normative
debates about the self-reliance agenda's motivations (e.g., Easton-Calabria and
Omata 2018; Bhagat 2020; Skran and Easton-Calabria 2020), the definition of
self-reliance used in this article aligns with the domains found in the UNHCR's
(2005) handbook and grounds our study's ICT aspect firmly in a migration/refugee
policy space. We focus our questions on refugee self-reliance in the domains of
economic inclusion (e.g., access to jobs and financial services), managing
administrative processes, accessing education, finding healthcare, and providing
for their own safety in host countries. We use this section to show how existing
research on refugee ICT affordances can be mapped onto the policy-level concept
of refugee self-reliance, thus setting up our methods and results sections.
In the early 2000s, Kabbar and Crump (2007) used a sample of newly arrived
refugees in Wellington, New Zealand, to examine how using ICTs supported
resettled refugees’ access to daily administrative and educational activities.
They found that community-based ICT programs supported by the city government
made it easier for refugees to access information and knowledge tools at their
own pace and supported secondary outcomes like language acquisition necessary
for achieving self-reliance. Evans, Perry, and Factor (2019) more recently
completed one of the first randomized control trials on the impact of
mobile-phone access on refugees’ e-government uptake. Drawing on a sample based
in the United States, they found that a treatment group of refugees who had
mobile internet access became self-sufficient more quickly than a control group
who did not. Stepping away from a high-income country context, however, raises
two questions: Do refugees have access to ICTs in middle-income host countries,
where many refugees apply for third-country resettlement, and if so, what
affordances do they gain from ICTs?
Access is a pre-requisite for ICT use, and refugees in host-country contexts
often have access to ICTs (Maitland and Xu 2015; UNHCR 2016; Hounsell and Owuor
2018). In Kenya, for example, demand for and access to ICTs and the internet
among refugees are high in both the Kakuma refugee camps and Nairobi (Hounsell
and Owuor 2018). In most cases, the key piece of technology in refugees’ daily
lives is mobile phones; in Kakuma, smartphones using 3G mobile internet were the
primary way that refugees accessed the internet (ibid.). Kakuma is not unique in
this regard; Maitland and Xu (2015) found similarly high levels of ICT use among
young Syrians in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. These results are
supported by the UNHCR's (2016) global survey on technology use in camp
settings, which showed that refugees across contexts relied heavily on mobile
phone-based internet access. While these studies confirm that refugees in
middle-income host countries have ICT access, they do not go into refugees’ ICT
affordances.
In response to data showing how many refugees have access to mobile internet and
smartphones, there has been a push in the refugee policy community to build an
app and internet-based tools that refugees can use to meet their daily needs.3
Essentially, organizations like the UNHCR are trying to bridge the gap between
individual ICT affordances and policy-level goals of using ICTs to support
refugee self-reliance. However, in interviews with refugees in Nairobi, Eppler
et al. (2020) found that institutional apps and websites explicitly designed to
support refugees’ access to healthcare were often unknown to urban refugees. It
is not impossible to bridge this information gap, which could be solved with
more effective digital communication strategies by refugee-supporting
institutions (Danielson 2013; Buffoni and Hopkins 2020). In practice though,
instead of using institutional ICT tools, many refugees described sophisticated,
idiosyncratic ways of using ICTs for community-level political, economic, and
social organizing via tools like WhatsApp and Viber (Eppler et al. 2020).
In Latin America, ICTs are also an important tool for refugees. Research by
Martin-Shields et al. (2021) used a survey of displaced Venezuelans and
long-term residents in Bogota, Colombia, to empirically study whether there were
differences in e-government use between long-term residents and newly arrived
displaced people. While Venezuelans in Bogota quickly gained access to ICTs,
their lack of official identification documentation prevented them from
accessing e-government services. This demand for technology access and use among
the urban displaced in Bogota is mirrored in Brazil, where displaced Venezuelans
rely on strong digital networks of support from within their immediate
communities and from local organizations for protection and social services but
are often shut out of official government services (Alencar 2019).
Even if refugees gain access to formal ICT tools like e-government platforms and
tools, using government ICT services often comes with unique risks (Ajana 2013;
Harney 2013; Witteborn 2015; Gillespie, Osseiran, and Cheesman 2018). Biometric
profiling of asylum-seekers by European states creates the pervasive risk of
surveillance by host-country security services, including potentially hostile
actors (Ajana 2013; Harney 2013). Gillespie, Osseiran, and Cheesman (2018) show
that during their journeys, refugees rely on digital connections with smugglers
and traffickers and that relying on these networks opens up refugees to
exploitation with no legal recourse in host countries. After navigating
often-perilous journeys, arrival in a host country comes with its own
challenges. Witteborn's (2015) long-term observation of refugees in Germany, for
example, showed how they balanced tolerance of digital surveillance by state
authorities with using ICTs to build community networks and maintain
cross-border political and social identities.
Building on Witteborn's (2015) work, we also see ICTs supporting the social side
of self-reliance among urban refugees and playing a central role in developing
community-level social networks, socializing, and accessing news and
entertainment. Madianou and Miller (2013) describe how “polymedia” environments
in which networks are shaped across different ICT platforms shape refugee
connectivity and socializing. Twigt (2018) examined how access to digital
connections and spaces was central to the abilities of Syrian refugees in Jordan
to maintain hope and optimism in an environment marked by prolonged displacement
and waiting. Twigt's results echo Leurs’s (2014) findings that access to ICTs
and the internet helped young Somalis stuck in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, deal with
the stress and precariousness of being stranded by creating avenues for
maintaining family connections via Skype and social media.
While connectivity and community empowerment are ostensibly good, there is also
a more critical line of research on refugees, ICTs, and self-reliance,
especially in low- and middle-income contexts. Madianou (2019), for instance,
introduces the concept of technocolonialism in which humanitarian actors use
technology to reshape the dependencies that exist between institutions and
refugees. These dependencies (or exclusions) can also manifest in ways that
block self-sufficiency; a particular example is a role of financial technology
(fintech) in providing refugees with or excluding them from banking services. As
Bhagat and Roderick (2020) explain, fintech solutions are often the only source
of capital for refugees in Kenya, creating a system where private capital from
the Global North intervenes in livelihood support for refugees, favoring those
deemed most entrepreneurial and able to repay loans. To explicitly bring
together the concepts of self-reliance and refugees’ ICT affordances, the next
section explains our methodology for answering our question: Do ICTs support
urban refugee self-reliance in Kuala Lumpur and Penang?
METHODOLOGY
Data collection for this study involved semi-structured interviews and two focus
groups, administered with 49 refugees and 10 practitioners in November 2019.
Based on Yin's (2009, 46–59) definition of an embedded case design, we conducted
semi-structured interviews with refugees from different communities, as well as
with respondents from community organizations, NGOs, and the UNHCR. Our sample
included 47 refugees from the Pakistani, Chin, Somali, Myanmar Muslim, and
Rohingya communities in Greater Kuala Lumpur. Two additional focus groups were
held with five Rohingya men and five Rohingya women in Penang; the reason for
the different methods is explained later in this section. We interviewed a
near-equal number of men (23) and women (24), whose ages ranged from 18 to 60
years old; the majority of the sample was aged 20–35.4 Education levels varied;
most respondents had limited formal education, although a few in the Pakistani
and Chin communities had training beyond university. The refugee communities
that respondents came from were selected with help from the local UNHCR office.
The first condition for participation was that community focal points felt safe
having community members participate in the study. The second condition was that
the communities with which we worked had robust community organizations engaged
in self-reliance activities.
Introductory interview questions centered on individuals’ access to technology
and were followed by more substantive questions on how technology assisted with
finding work; banking; accessing health and education services; building and
retaining social/familial relationships; interacting with public bodies;
maintaining safety (e.g., UNHCR and Malaysian immigration services); and getting
news. Additional questions examined refugees’ knowledge of and perceptions about
the utility of technology, particularly social media and other platforms such as
cab-hailing apps and e-wallets. Interviews took 30–50 minutes, depending on
respondents’ experience with and use of ICTs, and we worked with interpreters
when necessary.5 Interviews were conducted in community centers or people's
homes, both to get a sense of the context in which respondents lived and to make
it easier for respondents to participate (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Map of the general areas in Kuala Lumpur where interviews took place.
Data on specific interview sites are not provided, due to privacy and safety
concerns (Source: ©OpenStreetMap contributors with modifications by authors (OSM
2022a)).Open in viewer
Semi-structured interviews with ten NGO workers, two community leaders, and
seven UNHCR staff members followed the logic of the interview instrument used
with refugees.6 Fifteen of the 19 interviewees from this sample were women. The
Malaysia UNHCR office was contacted through already-established relationships
with the organization, and NGO workers were contacted based on previous research
relationships established in Malaysia. We interviewed staff from UNHCR
departments that had the most engagement with local refugee communities.
Interviews with institutional actors were meant to gather data on how
organizations implemented ICT solutions in their daily work and to understand
the assumptions they made regarding refugee use of ICTs and social media in
daily life. It is important to note that forming and maintaining an NGO in
Malaysia is difficult, due to legal constraints preventing registration (Amnesty
International 2019, 9–10). For this reason, we cover institutional digital
strategies in less detail than refugee community digital strategies (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Maps of the general area in Penang where interviews took place. Data
on specific interview sites are not provided, due to privacy and safety concerns
(Source: ©OpenStreetMap contributors with modifications by authors (OSM
2022b)).Open in viewer
Ethical considerations were central to our research planning. Due to the lack of
direct UNHCR support in Penang, refugees there faced a more acute set of risks
than their peers in Kuala Lumpur.7 For this reason, we conducted focus groups,
rather than individual interviews, with Rohingya refugees in Penang. While there
is no perfect strategy when doing refugee research, we aimed to draw on the
recommendations of Jacobsen and Landau (2003) when thinking through our methods
and ethical considerations. By using semi-structured interviews in Kuala Lumpur
and focus groups in Penang, our approach allowed us to let participants go
deeper into topics that interested them and to highlight their experiences with,
and beliefs about, using ICTs.
RESULTS
Using our concept of self-reliance as an analytic framework, interviews covered
five domains of self-reliance: economic, educational, administrative, health,
and safety/security. This mix of domains allowed us both to cover mainstream
areas of self-reliance, such as economic activities and access to public
services, and to gather data on the health benefits of informal social
structures such as maintaining family/social networks and community-organized
safety programs (e.g., Grabska 2006; Easton-Calabria et al. 2017; Pascucci 2017;
Cabalquinto 2019).
SELF-RELIANCE AND ECONOMIC OUTCOMES
For the majority of respondents, work and work-seeking were core parts of
self-reliance. Since refugees lack work rights in Malaysia, they commonly worked
in the informal economy. Thus, respondents sought work through face-to-face
interactions, as well as on social media platforms, such as WhatsApp and
Facebook. Refugees would hear about a job and let others know that an employer
was hiring and whether the employer was reliable. The breadth of these social
and digital networks was especially pronounced in Penang's Rohingya community.
Male refugees interviewed in Penang described traveling regularly to work sites
across the country for construction and farming jobs which lasted a few months
at a time and having to frequently keep in touch with their networks to identify
the next work opportunity (Rohingya male focus group discussion, 13 November
2019). Information about jobs came via individual phone calls and short message
service (SMS) text messages or through established WhatsApp groups, indicating
significant reliance on these modes of communication.
The Chin community organization in Kuala Lumpur ran job boards on the
organization's Facebook group, curated by the organization's leadership.
Employers reached out to the community organization's leaders, who verified job
details and the employer's reliability, prior to posting the ad (Interview, Chin
community leader, November 8, 2019). These online job boards were the only
example of a community organization formally filtering job opportunities to make
sure refugees were treated fairly at work, which was surprising, given the legal
and workplace safety risks that refugees face in Malaysia. Indeed, multiple
respondents shared experiences of employers refusing to pay them for work they
had completed (Interview Chin Male 4, November 8, 2019; Rohingya male focus
group discussion, November 13, 2019; Myanmar Muslim Male, November 16, 2019).
While Rohingya men in Penang and the Chin community in Kuala Lumpur used
networking tools to improve job search outcomes, respondents also shared about
innovative ways they showcased professional talents using ICTs. In one case,
Instagram was used to create a digital presence and to market photography
services to the local refugee communities (Myanmar Muslim Male 2, November 16,
2019), and a baker in the Somali community in Kuala Lumpur used WhatsApp to let
consumers know when and where to purchase his bread (Somali Male 2, November 7,
2019). Interviews showed examples of ICTs increasing opportunities for those
with a trade to build a business and for communities to share information about
employers so that those seeking day labor could maximize job searches while
minimizing the risk of exploitation. Since the communities with which we worked
were generally spread across Kuala Lumpur's sprawling peripheral neighborhoods,
ICTs and the internet played key roles in helping them find jobs throughout the
city. As Martin-Shields (2022) notes, due to Kuala Lumpur's sprawling nature and
lack of transit access in refugee neighborhoods, many refugees faced a transit
deficit and often struggled to access the city's inner neighborhoods.
While job seeking using ICTs manifested in a variety of ways, financial
inclusion was almost non-existent. Management of wages was predominantly limited
to physical cash payments kept with the individual. Access to financial services
was rare, as UNHCR cards were often rejected by Malaysian banks and financial
institutions as a form of identification. Familiarity with e-wallets and
ICT-based financial tools among refugees with whom we spoke was limited,
although some respondents expressed a desire to learn more about them. UNHCR
staff noted that the challenge of refugee financial inclusion in Malaysia was
magnified by many refugees lacking familiarity with electronic cash, e-wallet
services, and bank accounts: “People would not understand where the money is and
how to use [an ATM card]” (Interview 4, UNHCR, November 4, 2019). Furthermore,
according to UNHCR staff, services like ride-sharing apps and public
transportation that required travelers to pay with money stored in e-wallets
were deemed inaccessible to refugees, even though urban transportation services
were critical to refugees’ daily lives. Although a UNHCR staff member stated
that UNHCR had limited involvement in local refugee communities’ day-to-day
economic organization and activities, the UNHCR was working with the Malaysian
government on financial inclusion through formal banking and digital tools like
e-wallets to improve economic self-reliance.
EDUCATION AND SELF-RELIANCE
ICT use in community schools run by refugees predominantly focused on using
video content, websites, or games in the classroom, when internet access was
available, and varied widely. Some respondents noted that community schools ran
computer courses and that the UNHCR had supported bringing in outside teachers
to do short courses on software programming and coding. While spending time in
the communities, we observed that many community centers had computers and that
these computers were often brought into refugee community schools when there
were specific lessons that required access to a computer.
Respondents from the Pakistani community reported using YouTube in the classroom
and using English-language websites to teach students English. In one case, the
coordinator for community schools in the Pakistani refugee community described
using Google Drive to manage records across different schools. This same
community also used e-books and downloaded worksheets for their students
(Pakistan Male interview 2, November 6, 2019). Overall, though, it seemed that
ICTs in the classroom were not a central concern for respondents. Indeed, as one
respondent put it, “you can have good education without computers; you just need
good teachers” (Pakistan Male 1 interview, November 6, 2019). It is important to
note, too, that Pakistani interviewees included a computer scientist and a
trained medical doctor, both of whom led the process of digitizing the
management of school activities. For communities that lacked skilled
individuals, schools were often “only simple, so we don’t have technology” (Chin
Female 2 interview, November 8, 2019).
Digital solutions for learning and teaching existed outside classroom
structures. For example, one Somali respondent who was a professional baker had
an idea for setting up a YouTube channel to help advertise the community bakery
and show others how to set up a bakery in their host country or city (Somali
Male interview 3, November 7, 2019). While the example of teaching people to set
up a bakery on YouTube was the only specific example of using a digital channel
to teach others a trade, many respondents noted that YouTube was a useful
resource for learning how to do things. The way that refugees described YouTube
as an information source could be considered ICTs supporting greater educational
self-reliance, but it would be a stretch to consider YouTube an education tool
in a systematic sense. Indeed, the biggest theme that emerged as we spoke with
refugees about education and visited their community schools had nothing to do
with technology: respondents were most concerned that community schools could
not provide credentials that would be recognized by host governments and that
refugees were banned from Malaysian government schools, colleges, and
universities. Without permission to access formal educational institutions and
gain locally recognized credentials, ICT solutions’ wider potential was limited
in terms of supporting the educational domain of refugee self-reliance.
ADMINISTRATION AND SELF-RELIANCE
All organizational and NGO staff we interviewed used ICTs, to varying degrees,
to communicate with refugee communities. The UNHCR set up WhatsApp groups with
community leaders, and an NGO working with survivors of sexual and gender-based
violence (SGBV) frequently contacted clients through WhatsApp. However, in
communicating with the larger refugee community on administrative issues such as
confirming appointments with the main office, the UNHCR primarily used phone
calls. In many cases, these phone calls came during the workday, when,
respondents explained, either their phones were confiscated by employers or they
were not allowed to answer them. As a result, appointments went unconfirmed,
and, if someone made the journey to the UNHCR, they were often told to
reschedule. These journeys were time consuming, and respondents mentioned that
an app to confirm appointments outside work hours would be a significant help.
As one respondent noted, “They take our email and phone number, but they only
ever call. They should use this [email] contact data” (Pakistan Male 2
interview, November 6, 2019).
The UNHCR also operated a website8 which provided general information on
resettlement, voluntary repatriation, education, health services, and how to
update a phone number. An email address was also available for refugees to
submit queries to the UNHCR, although this email account was managed manually
and emails were forwarded to the relevant unit. UNHCR staff acknowledged that
not all refugees were familiar with email services and, thus, relied on local
organizations or friends to assist them with emailing the UNHCR (Interview 5,
UNHCR, November 5, 2019). The lack of response from the UNHCR, including things
like missed emails and calls, was cited by refugee interviewees as a
frustration, a limit on being administratively self-reliant. One refugee said
she felt stuck in “limbo,” since she was unable to find out where her
resettlement case was in the review process (Pakistani Female 1, November 7,
2020). Respondents stated that they would feel reassured and empowered by having
access to information regarding the progress of their cases, such as an app or
web platform that gave them access to their biodata and a summary of their
resettlement status.
Refugee communities in Kuala Lumpur relied on their community organizations’
strong digital networks to deal with the administrative domain of self-reliance.
These organizations had well-established WhatsApp groups managed by community
leaders based in different neighborhoods. Information (e.g., where health
services were located or when community schools would open) was communicated by
refugee community focal points through community Facebook pages. In the Chin
community, Facebook Messenger was the main form of communication between the
community organization and community members (Interview, Chin community leader,
November 8, 2020). In other communities, WhatsApp was the predominant form of
communication. On both platforms, voice memos were often sent to ensure that
people who could not read could listen to the information. Using these channels,
community organizations played a key role in re-broadcasting and sharing updates
from the UNHCR office.
HEALTH AND SELF-RELIANCE
Refugees reported using the internet, especially YouTube and Facebook, for
health information. Most often, however, health information was solicited from
other community members. One respondent, for example, explained that he and his
wife were unaware that they would be given access to birth and post-natal
medical treatment in Malaysia and, thus, decided to smuggle themselves back into
Thailand to give birth (Myanmar Muslim Male 1, interview November 16, 2019). The
interviewee explained that there were complications during the birth and that
while being smuggled back into Malaysia, the baby died. Had reliable information
explaining that he and his wife could access emergency services in Kuala Lumpur
been available, they would not have made the journey to Thailand. While an
institution like the UNHCR may see a website as a means to disseminate
information efficiently to a large audience, the volume of information can lead
to confusion and potentially tragic outcomes. Essentially, the volume of
information on a website is not necessarily synonymous with creating the
conditions for self-reliance.
Where technology did show signs of improving refugee health self-reliance was in
the psycho-social and affective spaces. ICTs can provide connections to families
and friends in origin countries, Malaysia, and elsewhere. Similar to findings by
Leurs (2014), Twigt (2018), Cabalquinto (2019), and Marlowe and Bruns (2021), we
found that familial connections relieved stress for refugees, with Facebook
cited as a source of connection both to the wider community and to news on the
origin country and loved ones there.9 Others cited watching movies or listening
to music on YouTube as a source of relaxation (Rohingya Female 3, November 10,
2019). Another respondent said that she used the internet to research ideas for
wellbeing and happiness in the home (Pakistani Female 1, November 6, 2019). Many
shared that WhatsApp or Facebook was used to keep up with social events
organized in the community. Many responses aligned with Twigt's (2018) findings
on refugees’ lives in Jordan and how digital connectivity provided social
connections that were fundamental to building a life and having hope for the
future. Overall, we found that in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, the domain of health
ICTs delivered important individual-level affordances, but at the population
level, the lack of clarity around legal access to public health services negated
the advantages ICTs brought to diffusing health information.
SAFETY: SECURITY, PROTECTION, AND SELF-RELIANCE
We break this section down by starting from the individual level of security and
protection and, then, moving to the community and state levels. At the
individual level, only a minority of respondents discussed having knowledge of
cybersecurity, privacy, and online safety (not wanting to post photos on
Facebook or share photos on WhatsApp, not using Facebook Messenger “as it
doesn’t feel safe” (Rohingya Female 2, November 10, 2019)), and most felt that
social media platforms were secure. The lack of interest in, or knowledge of,
online safety and privacy is particularly concerning, as younger refugees used
social media platforms, such as WeChat and TikTok, but may not have been aware
of the risks posed by being active on them (Organization 4, November 15, 2019).
Staff from community organizations felt that refugees’ understanding of
cybersecurity was limited. For example, in the context of SGBV cases, many
survivors who had left their partners were reportedly unaware of the “track my
phone” app or being outed on social media platforms by members of their own
community (Organization 4, November 15, 2019). Contrary to our expectations
going into interviews, we were surprised at how little individual respondents
seemed to care about digital security and privacy.
At the community level, community organizations used ICTs to foster refugee
protection in a variety of ways. One was using WhatsApp groups to alert members
of immigration raids or a police presence in an area, advocating for community
members’ expedited registration at the UNHCR, and emailing the UNHCR lists of
community members who had been detained. SGBV response was one area where
communities and NGOs consistently used digital technologies to support refugee
self-reliance. An NGO working with survivors of SGBV operated a hotline through
which people could report cases (Interview, Organization 4, November 15, 2019).
This same organization disseminated MP3s in the Rohingya language to provide
awareness on SGBV in Rohingya communities and received a generally positive
response: people liked being able to listen to its content in their own time,
and some shared the file with friends and family (ibid.). In this way, ICTs were
used to both educate individuals and help communities recognize issues of SGBV,
while also increasing access to support services.
What we heard in interviews, which aligns with Grabska's (2006) and Pascucci's
(2017) findings, is that refugee- and community-led organizations can be central
to fostering self-reliance through protection activities. However, there are
limits; some community organizations, like the Chin organization, were very
effective at using ICTs to document abuses by police and human traffickers so
that refugees could include them in interviews with the UNHCR (Interview, Chin
community leader, November 8, 2019). Their ability to extend this capacity to
support neighboring communities was limited, however. In practice, refugee
community-organized safety and protection activities could not be extended to
protecting refugees’ rights or affording legal protections, since there is no
national legislation that provides any legal rights or protection to refugees in
Malaysia.
At the state level, the UNCHR's Malaysia office has attempted to leverage
digital technologies to prevent harassment of refugees by police (UNHCR 2022c).
Because no legislation in Malaysia defines refugees’ immigration status, police
often arrest refugees under the pretense that their UNHCR documents are fake
and, then, require someone from the UNHCR to come to immigration detention and
confirm that the arrested refugee is, indeed, registered with the UNHCR (Aspire
Penang 2022; Pakistan Male 1 interview, November 6, 2019). The local UNHCR
office developed an app, in collaboration with the Malaysian government, which
police could use to scan QR codes on UNHCR registration cards to verify their
authenticity. Few respondents knew about this app, and among those who did,
enthusiasm was lacking: police often arrested people anyway, since the UNHCR
card itself was not a legal form of identification under Malaysian law (Pakistan
Male 1 interview, November 6, 2019; Interview, Chin community leader, November
8, 2020). The UNHCR cards’ lack of legal standing was the root problem; for
refugees in Malaysia, UNHCR registration had no legal standing, so demonstrating
a UNHCR card's “realness” had no binding effect on whether police could arrest a
refugee for being in Malaysia illegally.
Informed consent, and whether refugees truly understood the implications of
having their data stored digitally by the UNHCR, presents another problem for
refugee self-reliance (Organization 2, November 14, 2019). Indeed, many refugees
in Malaysia cannot read and write, and the concept of informed consent may not
exist in their language; regardless, they are required to consent to sharing
their data if they want to apply for asylum (Interview 4, UNHCR, November 4,
2019). While a lack of informed consent and digital data privacy is important,
refugees in Malaysia did not view them as critical problems. When refugees in
Malaysia were harassed and surveilled by the police, it generally took place
in-person. The immigration police knew where to find these communities, so
tracking refugees online was not necessary.
DISCUSSION: DIGITALIZATION AND FRAGMENTATION OF SELF-RELIANCE
After going through the results and data, we return to our question: Do ICTs
support refugee self-reliance in Kuala Lumpur and Penang? At the personal level,
yes; at the institutional level, no. As we showed, ICTs made possible a wide
range of individual-level self-reliance activities for urban refugees in
Malaysia. Twigt (2018) would refer to these individual-level ICT uses as
affective types of refugee self-reliance, including building social networks,
maintaining contact with relatives at home, and finding informal work.
Respondents shared that these personal-level factors made them feel more
connected, hopeful, and proactive.
Most respondents had one or two key communication apps — generally, WhatsApp
plus Viber or Imo — that they used for individual-level self-reliance
activities. The uses of WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube manifested in
idiosyncratic, personal ways — the Somali baker who wanted to make YouTube
videos about baking bread (Somali Male Interview 2) or the photographer from the
Myanmar Muslim community who advertised his services on Instagram (Myanmar
Muslim Male 2, November 16, 2019). At this individual level, most refugees found
creative, sometimes-intimate, ways to derive some level of self-reliance using
ICTs. These examples of self-reliance may not show up in a UNHCR handbook, but
they provide windows into understanding how urban refugees in Malaysia used ICTs
to create spaces for themselves that they controlled.
When the discussion was expanded to using apps and the internet for
institutional domains of self-reliance like finding jobs and accessing health
and education systems, however, respondents generally said these activities were
handled face-to-face, instead of via ICTs. For example, Rohingya men in Penang
(Rohingya Male Focus Group, November 12, 2019) who reported having extensive
personal networks to share information about new job opportunities generally did
so face-to-face and only occasionally used WhatsApp. Examples of community
organizations or individuals doing things like creating online job forums to
share job opportunities were the exception, not the rule. When we talked about
identity and case administration, a majority of respondents said that an app
that gave them the ability to control their data and case records and to know
where they were in different administrative processes, would be useful. Much of
this information, however, was on paper or locally stored hard drives at the
UNHCR office, along with a centralized database mainly housing refugees’
biodata.
The inherent problem with using ICTs to support refugee self-reliance in a
context like Malaysia is that most systemic barriers to refugee self-reliance we
observed were not amenable to ICT solutions. ICTs themselves do not grant
refugees the right to set up a bank account or access education and health
services if national law bans them from accessing these services in any form.
Bhagat (2020) describes how the implementation of self-reliance policies in
Nairobi, Kenya, removed the humanitarian safety net but did not grant legal
status, forcing refugees into the informal economy to survive. In Malaysia, the
experience was similar: refugees were largely forced to meet their economic,
educational, health, and social needs through informal community-level
solutions. ICTs might have made it easier to organize community-level
self-reliance, but they did not fundamentally change the power dynamics that
forced refugees in Kuala Lumpur and Penang into permanent legal, economic, and
social precarity.
CONCLUSIONS
ICTs are central to the daily lives of refugees living in Kuala Lumpur and
Penang and support refugee self-reliance at the individual and community levels.
To increase the potential positive impact ICTs can have on refugee self-reliance
in Malaysia and elsewhere, host-country governments must create legal avenues
for refugees to access financial services, work permits, public schools, and
public health systems. Without an inclusive legal framework, ICTs risk being a
partial work-around to meet refugees’ economic, social, and administrative
needs. Our findings are not limited to refugee contexts, either — displaced
people not under UNHCR protection, and migrants moving between cities and
countries without identity documentation, face many of the same barriers to
achieving self-reliance across the range of economic, social, and administrative
domains as do refugees (e.g., Lintner 2020; Martin-Shields et al. 2022).
Considering the social and political barriers refugees and displaced people
often face (e.g., Tomlinson and Egan 2002; Zeus 2011), the role of ICTs in
self-reliance will be salient to a wide spectrum of urban migrants. As more
people are displaced to cities, due to conflict, environmental change, and
economic crises, Mike Davis’s (2006) vision of large numbers of marginalized
urban migrants slipping through a stretched social safety poses a real risk. For
urban refugees and other displaced people, self-reliance will be an inherent
part of life, and access to ICTs will play a role in achieving self-reliance.
However, international organizations and host governments must, first, focus on
reducing the legal and social barriers that prevent refugees and migrants from
accessing the full spectrum of economic, educational, social, and administrative
services available in the cities where they settle.
DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTERESTS
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
FUNDING
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was
supported by the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und
Entwicklung (grant no. 9002001).
ORCID ID
Charles Martin-Shields https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1039-5208
FOOTNOTES
1 An easy way to understand “affordance” as it relates to how people use ICTs
is: ICTs afford someone the ability to do things.
Go to Footnote
2 In a surprisingly candid quote, Malaysian Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah
Zainudin said, in reference to UNHCR identification card-holders, “The
government does not recognise their status as refugees but as illegal immigrants
holding United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) cards” (Anis
2020).
Go to Footnote
3 https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/.
Go to Footnote
4 An important note about ages: Many refugees we interviewed did not have birth
records, so birthdays and actual ages were often based on their own estimates.
Go to Footnote
5 The interview questionnaire is available upon request. Raw sound file data are
available in accordance with German Development Institute open data policies and
the authors’ discretion.
Go to Footnote
6 At the request of UNHCR Malaysia, we do not cite specific units where we
conducted interviews, due to political sensitivities.
Go to Footnote
7 Information about unique risks faced by refugees in Penang came up during
preparatory discussions with staff from the NGO Penang Stop Human Trafficking,
who helped organize our Penang focus groups and served as interpreters, on
November 12, 2019.
Go to Footnote
8 help.unhcr.org/malaysia
Go to Footnote
9 IMO and Viber were other popular messaging services, particularly with Myanmar
ethnic groups.
Go to Footnote
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International Migration Review
Volume 58, Issue 1
Pages: 69 - 93
Article first published online: December 25, 2022
Issue published: March 2024
KEYWORDS
1. urban refugees
2. ICTs
3. self-reliance
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AUTHORS
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CHARLES MARTIN-SHIELDS
German Institute of Development and Sustainability, Bonn, Germany
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1039-5208
Charles.Martin-Shields@die-gdi.de
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KATRINA MUNIR-ASEN
Lighthouse Partnerships, London, UK
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NOTES
Charles Martin-Shields, German Institute of Development and Sustainability,
53113 Bonn, Germany. Email: Charles.Martin-Shields@die-gdi.de
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1. Self-sufficiency communities for economic development: Urban perspecti...
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2. Mediated communication and refugee resilience: A social psychological ...
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3. Mediated communication and refugee resilience: A social psychological ...
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FIGURES
Figure 1. Map of the general areas in Kuala Lumpur where interviews took place.
Data on specific interview sites are not provided, due to privacy and safety
concerns (Source: ©OpenStreetMap contributors with modifications by authors (OSM
2022a)).
Go to FigureOpen in Viewer
Figure 2. Maps of the general area in Penang where interviews took place. Data
on specific interview sites are not provided, due to privacy and safety concerns
(Source: ©OpenStreetMap contributors with modifications by authors (OSM 2022b)).
Go to FigureOpen in Viewer
MEDIA
TABLES
Table 1. Current Population Statistics of Refugees in Malaysia by Nationality.
While There are Refugees From 50 Countries Residing in Malaysia, this Table Only
Specifies Refugee Communities With More Than 500 Members in Malaysia.
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Figure 1
Figure 1. Map of the general areas in Kuala Lumpur where interviews took place.
Data on specific interview sites are not provided, due to privacy and safety
concerns (Source: ©OpenStreetMap contributors with modifications by authors (OSM
2022a)).
View figure
Figure 2
Figure 2. Maps of the general area in Penang where interviews took place. Data
on specific interview sites are not provided, due to privacy and safety concerns
(Source: ©OpenStreetMap contributors with modifications by authors (OSM 2022b)).
Table 1
Table 1. Current Population Statistics of Refugees in Malaysia by Nationality.
While There are Refugees From 50 Countries Residing in Malaysia, this Table Only
Specifies Refugee Communities With More Than 500 Members in Malaysia.
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