Migration & Diaspora

During Bangladesh's 2024 quota-reform movement, non-resident Bangladeshis used social platforms and remittance flows to challenge state authority. How do the Global South Diasporas Mobilize for Transnational Political Change? (CHI 2026, Best Paper Honorable Mention) traces the phases of their collective action — from technology-mediated engagement and rapid network building to a strategic remittance boycott and adaptive responses to surveillance and information blackouts — and introduces the idea of "diasporic superposition". A companion study documents how the ten-day nationwide internet shutdown during the movement affected the rights of Bangladeshis living abroad (Internet Disconnection as a Risk to Cross-Border Human Rights).

Borders also persist inside data systems. Drawing on interviews with 32 immigrants in Canada, Data Migration in HCI (CHI 2026) shows how credit bureaus, credential evaluators, healthcare databases, and immigration portals gatekeep immigrants' civic rights, and how community-mediated informal networks help people make their data legitimate in a new country. Related work examines AI in immigration decision-making through Canadian parliamentary discourse and how information retrieval systems construct and amplify immigration narratives.

When global politics cut communities off from formal financial platforms, people build their own infrastructures. Our three-month ethnography with the Iranian community in Toronto, Money Whispers (CHI 2021), documented the financial loss, fear, uncertainty, and privacy breaches involved in sending money home, and the informal workarounds that make it possible. With the community, we then co-designed Kabootar (CSCW 2022), a community-based FinTech application that matches senders and receivers of money across borders.

More recently, we have studied Iranian immigrant nonprofits. Artificial Intelligence at the Margins (DIS 2026, Best Paper Honorable Mention) shows how legitimacy barriers, capacity gaps, and ethical dilemmas create a cycle of infrastructural immobility — one that generative AI risks deepening. Working with practitioners, we designed AMINA (GROUP 2027), an inclusive and accountable AI assistant for immigrant nonprofits. We also follow immigrants' emotional and informational trajectories in Reddit communities over time.

Research on refugees often stops at immediate needs. Our two-year ethnography with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, Infrastructuring Hope (ICTD 2020), looks instead at solidarity, leadership, negotiation, and the hopes that shape long-term settlement. We have also studied the everyday lives and ICT use of internally displaced people in northern Iraq (Exile Within Borders), and how humanitarian workers supported refugees and asylum seekers in Turkey at a distance during COVID-19 (A Matter of Time).

Migration is also about memory and identity. Memory through Design (CHI 2020, Best Paper Honorable Mention) introduced a paper-based drafting tool through which newcomers express the cultural values of their homes. Stepping back, A Decade of International Migration Research in HCI (ToCHI 2022) surveys 282 publications and interviews 11 researchers to chart how the field has evolved and where it should go next.