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A brief history of data justice literature

Before the emergence of a dedicated body of literature on the concept of data justice, responses to the increasing datafication of society tended to focus primarily on issues of data protection, privacy, and security 1.

The first wave of data justice scholarship—emerging in the pathbreaking work undertaken by the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University and the Global Data Justice project at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society—sought to move beyond this limited view by situating the ethical challenges posed by datafication in the wider context of social justice concerns. This initial data justice research sought to be more responsive to the real-world conditions of power asymmetries, discrimination, and exploitation that have come to define the “data-society nexus” 2.

Data-society nexus

In “Exploring data justice: Conceptions, applications, and directions”, Dencik, Hintz, Redden, and Treré describe:

“This shifts the focus of the data-society nexus away from simple binaries that frame the debate in terms of trade-offs or ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ data in which data is an abstract technical artefact. Instead, data is seen as something that is situated and necessarily understood in relation to other social practices” (2019, p. 873).

This first wave of data justice approached critical ethical questions primarily through a focus on surveillance, information capitalism, and the political economy of data. This focus on the political and economic forces surrounding datafication3, however, was less concerned with the underlying sources of data injustice linked with deeper socially, culturally, and historically entrenched structures of domination. Further to this, it has been noted that much of the academic discourse around data-intensive technologies has been dominated by global north perspectives, interests, and values4. Approaches to data justice have yet a long way to go in incorporating and engaging with global majority visions of ethical and just ways of working, being, and interconnecting with people and the planet that are rooted in non-Western belief systems.

The agenda of data justice aspires to encompass a sufficiently broad reach that recognises the plurality of ways of being and the living contexts of all individuals and communities impacted by datafication and digital infrastructures globally. For this reason, the inclusion of non-Western knowledges, world views and values that might shape possible data governance futures is a crucial precondition of advancing data justice research and practice.

From Shmyla Khan, Digital Rights Foundation

Migrants and refugees are inherently vulnerable and precarious bodies, often occupying a liminal space within the imagination of body politic as well as the state.

Speaking from the experience of Pakistan, surveillance, datafication, and exclusion of these bodies has been central to the nation-building process. Dealing with several waves of migrants, first after partition from British India and then the influx of migrant populations from newly independent Bangladesh provide good insight into the post-colonial national-building process. In the first wave it was integral to the nation that Muslims coming from across the newly-imposed Indian border be absorbed within the country, Pakistan Citizenship Act,1952 provides an expansive definition of who can claim to be a citizen. However, we see state practice change with the influx of migrants and displaced persons after the 1971 war, as Bihari migrants flowed in from Bangladesh. Many of these migrants still lack official citizenship and documentation despite having a strong claim of citizenship. Many of them are concentrated in informal settlements, with their families denied national identification to this day in 2022. They repeatedly face issues with registration into the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), unable to become data subjects in the eyes of the state.

The third wave of migration in the country has been refugees from across the border with Afghanistan in wake of the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and has continued with the rule of the Taliban and US invasion. These refugees have been systemically denied citizenship, even when next generations have laid claim to legal birth right citizenship. However, the state has sought to look at these bodies from the prism of national security and surveillance--biometric Proof of Registration (PoR) cards are issued to refugees by NADRA. Despite being datafied, these bodies are still looked upon with suspicion—there are regular purging drives by NADRA to cancel registration of registration of documentation for refugees or anyone suspected of being Afghan. These bodies are coded as security risks, their informal settlements often razed to the ground on flimsy suspicions of crime -- always existing in that liminal space despite registration and datafication.

  1. Leslie, D., Katell, M., Aitken, M., Singh, J., Briggs, M., Powell, R., Rincon, C., Chengeta, T., Birhane, A., Perini, A., Jayadeva, S., & Mazumder, A., (2022). Advancing data justice research and practice: An integrated literature review. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4073376 ↩

  2. Dencik, L., Hintz, A., Redden, J., & Treré, E. (2019). Exploring data justice: Conceptions, applications, and directions. Information, Communication & Society, 22(7), 873-881. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1606268 ↩

  3. Dencik, L., Hintz, A., & Cable, J. (2016). Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti-surveillance resistance in political activism. Big Data & Society, 3(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716679678 ↩

  4. Aggarwal, N. (2020). Introduction to the special issue on intercultural digital ethics. Philosophy & Technology, 33(4), 547-550. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-020-00428-1; Mhlambi, S. (2020). From rationality to relationality: Ubuntu as an ethical and human rights framework for artificial intelligence governance. Carr Center Discussion Paper Series, 2020(009). https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/files/cchr/files/ccdp_2020-009_sabelo_b.pdf; Birhane, A. (2021). Algorithmic injustice: a relational ethics approach. Patterns, 2(2), 100205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100205 ↩