Self-Sovereignty for Refugees? The Contested Horizons of Digital Identity
Self-Sovereignty for Refugees? The Contested Horizons of Digital Identity
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DOI：
10.1080/14650045.2020.1823836
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发表时间：
2020-10-04
期刊：
影响因子：
2.9
通讯作者：
Cheesman, Margie
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cheesman, Margie
本文批判性地探讨了“自我主权身份”（SSI）的边界政治和移民管理的影响。SSI指的是用户控制的、分散的数字识别形式。SSI与分布式账本技术区块链密切相关，倡导者将其作为增强边缘化群体（包括难民）权能的工具。除其他好处外，一些人声称SSI通过赋予个人对其身份信息的控制权和所有权，消除了对强大的集中式机构结构的需求。然而，通过民族志研究在一个国际援助组织，我发现，SSI是一个胚胎技术与不确定的属性和利益。我确定了一系列竞争的逻辑在辩论中围绕SSI的解放潜力，这涉及到四个问题：（一）技术的中立性，（二）难民的能力，（三）全球治理和民族国家，（四）新的经济模式的数字身份。SSI同时也是企业授权、自主权和数据安全新模式的潜在推动者，也是维持和扩大官僚和商业权力的手段。我在身份控制系统的谱系中介绍了SSI，并认为，在实践中，它很可能会助长公司和国家对难民人口的权力。
This paper critically examines the implications of 'self-sovereign identity' (SSI) for border politics and migration management. SSI refers to user-controlled, decentralised forms of digital identification. Closely linked with the distributed ledger technology blockchain, SSI is presented by advocates as a tool to empower marginalised groups, including refugees. Among other benefits, some claim that SSI removes the need for powerful, centralised institutional structures by giving individuals control and ownership of their identity information. However, through ethnographic research in an international aid organisation, I find that SSI is an embryonic technology with indeterminate properties and benefits. I identify a series of competing logics in the debates around SSI's emancipatory potential, which relate to four issues: (i) the neutrality of the technology, (ii) the capacities of refugees, (iii) global governance and the nation state, and (iv) new economic models for digital identity. SSI is simultaneously the potential enabler of new modes of empowerment, autonomy and data security for refugeesanda means of maintaining and extending bureaucratic and commercial power. I situate SSI in a genealogy of systems of identity control and argue that, in practice, it is likely to feed into the powers of corporations and states over refugee populations.