Okong'o Kinyanjui
Queering Technology: how asylum-seekers produce technology to subvert state-led violence and surveillance
Mentor: Dr. Ahalya Satkunaratnam
| As community policing schemes are increasingly being deployed in urban cities and refugee camps across the country, government officials and independent criminals are misusing mobile technologies to disproportionately monitor queer bodies and extort them. In response, forcibly displaced queer asylum-seekers are inventing and repurposing digital tools in their fight against pervasive state-led violence and surveillance. These techno-political tensions expose a key question that I have been committed to investigating: how can technology facilitate meaningful dialogue between governments and vulnerable populations when the very same technologies are used to violate the latter’s privacy? |
