External publications

Digital sidewalks: using urban theory to understand technology use among migrants in Bogota

Martin-Shields, Charles
External Publications (2020)

published on www.transient-spaces.org, 19.05.2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34834/2019.0013
Volltext/Document

When we think about how digitalization and the internet affect the lives and opportunities for migrants, it is important to think beyond the supply side of having a smartphone and affording mobile data. For development agencies and municipalities who want to use technology in their work, they also have to think about demand. The meaning that people find in the neighborhood around them, through connections to the characters that make up the community, drives demand for digital connections. If development practitioners focus on creating the social, political and legal space for migrants to live full urban lives, migrants’ use of technology to augment that urban life will follow.