July De Wilde
Digital technologies in general, and mobile phones in particular, have become essential tools for accessing information and resources during transit journeys and processes of refugee (re)settlement. Parallelly, organisations working with refugees in host societies increasingly use digital tools to provide effective and efficient information.
The wider study of this presentation evaluates the use and effectiveness of fedasilinfo.be. The website, managed by the Belgian reception authorities, aims to provide seekers of international protection (IP) and service providers involved in their reception, with relevant and reliable information on 8 central themes in 14 different languages. For the evaluation of the website, we used a mixed-methods approach and collected three different datasets: (1) an online survey amongst 174 collaborators, (2) interviews with 31 refugees and (3) screen capture recordings (N=26) users while searching for information about their asylum procedure.
This presentation focuses on the varying challenges that exist for persons who do not have (full) access to the provided information and are therefore potentially more vulnerable. Members of small(er) language groups are excluded from the information because their language is not available, others are being erroneously assimilated to speakers of regional variants and therefore lack information. For some languages, only written text is available, while other seekers of IP can access information through both text and audio. Likewise, low levels of digital literacy hinder the abilities of some seekers of IP to manage the provided information efficiently.
Our discussion shows that the development of a multilingual website, praiseworthy as the initiative may be, also urges a range of questions about (i) digital literacy practices, (ii) the different values ascribed to language (variants), (iii) the practical challenges that are involved in providing information in ways that aim for rationality of decision, fairness, or equality and (iv) language rights.
Keywords: digital communication, refugees, access, multilingual website.