Immigrants' Computing Practices

Outcome: CHI 26, DIS 26, Submitted, and Submitted

Overview

This project examines how immigrant and diaspora communities engage with digital and financial systems across borders. It focuses on how people experience organizational adoption of different algorithmic tools as well as use remittance systems, online platforms, and generative AI systems to support communities back home, navigate institutional barriers, and participate in collective sensemaking and action.

Across different contexts, this project shows how these systems shape what communities can do, while also highlighting how people adapt, resist, and repurpose them in practice.

Approach

This research combines qualitative and system-level analysis across multiple contexts:

  • Interviews: Interviews with diaspora communities with South Asian and Middle Eastern heritage and immigrant nonprofit organizers operating across North America and Europe
  • Platform analysis: Discourse in the immigration related online spaces, using mixed-methods approach (e.g., NLP and thematic analysis).
  • Participatory Approach: Examination of how nonprofit groups coordinate work, manage resources, and build trust through participatory workshops.
  • Infrastructure analysis: Study of platforms, remittance systems, and public-sector technologies that shape participation and access

Key Findings and Contributions

  • Diasporas are not just supporters–they actively organize, coordinate, and influence events across borders
  • Many systems are not designed for immigrant communities, creating barriers around access, legitimacy, and visibility
  • Nonprofits often rely on informal tools and workarounds to operate under constraints
  • Shows how financial and digital systems can become tools for collective action, such as coordinating remittances or boycotts
  • New technologies like AI can both support and complicate nonprofit and community work
  • Introduces concepts such as diasporic superposition and residual mobilities to explain how people navigate these systems
  • Offers insights for designing more inclusive and flexible technologies that better support transnational communities