Digital Exiles

A deep exploration of the opportunities and risks a global digital economy poses for refugees.

Digital Exiles opens a rare window into the world of refugees trying to survive and thrive in an increasingly digitalized and technological world of work. Often excluded from local employment and struggling to make ends meet, refugees are increasingly dependent on digital jobs and online work as a financial lifeline. Andreas Hackl offers a human-centered and global perspective to these struggles through his research into three of the most important refugee-hosting countries: Lebanon, Kenya, and Germany.

The pursuit of a digital livelihood—from attending coding schools in Berlin to training datasets for AI in crisis-stricken Lebanon to online freelancing in Kenya’s refugee camps—represents an increasingly important income opportunity for refugees. Digital work programs by aid organizations and the private sector aim to help the forcibly displaced become self-reliant and successful workers, yet, for many, it creates new forms of exclusion, precarity, and risk. Combining human stories with insights from five years of multisited research and applied work with leading organizations, the author presents an alternative vision of an inclusive world of work that can help shape the fair digital economy of the future.

Andreas Hackl is a Social Anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh, specializing in international development, migration, and the digital economy. He is the author of The Invisible Palestinians.