Technology-assisted analysis of home, border and belonging

About the project

Against a backdrop of escalating unrest, war, and violence across several global regions, millions of individuals are compelled to leave their homelands in search of safety, stability, and the possibility of rebuilding their lives elsewhere. Yet the notion of home for migrants—how it is defined, created, and experienced—remains deeply complex. Migrants’ intersectional positions, shaped by factors such as gender, class, legal status, ethnicity, and digital access, influence their capacity to establish a sense of home in transit or destination contexts. At the same time, the increasing use of digital technologies throughout migration journeys, along with the growing presence of smart devices in everyday life, introduces new possibilities for constructing non‑physical, digitally mediated forms of home.

MIGDIS offers an intersectional and interdisciplinary analysis of how technological advances shape migrants’ experiences of home and belonging. The project opens a new line of enquiry into the ways migrants negotiate home and place through digital tools and infrastructures across different scales and settings in two key transit/destination countries: Ireland and Turkey.

Bringing together expertise from sociology and computer science, MIGDIS investigates the entanglements of home‑making and technology through three thematic work packages, supported by a fourth dedicated to synthesis, analysis, and dissemination. Using a participatory research design across all components, the project explores:

1. Technologies of mobile homing – through participant‑led digital ethnography examining how migrants use technologies and online platforms to connect or disconnect from translocal places, transnational communities, and imagined futures.
2. Technologies of border homing – by analysing how home is constructed, negotiated, and experienced in proximity to physical borders, and how digital tools mediate these spatial, emotional, and political encounters.
3. Technologies of safe home – by investigating smart home environments and their dual potential to support safety and stability while also creating new avenues for harm, including domestic violence and coercive control.

Together, these work packages provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of how digital technologies reshape the meaning, practice, and politics of home in contemporary migration.

The Team

Dr Mastoureh Fathi, Department of Sociology and Criminology (PI)

Dr Paolo Palmieri, School of Computer Science (Co-PI)

Dr Pooya Ghoddousi, Post doctoral fellow.

Martino Zibetti, Research assistant and PhD student

Funder & Dates

Funded by Research Ireland through the COALESCE Programme, from October 2025 - October 2027.