Thesis Title:
Negotiating the Digitised Welfare State: A Participatory Study with first-time home seekers in Tower Hamlets
Thesis Abstract:
European welfare states are increasingly adopting digital solutions due to rising demand, budget cuts, and post-pandemic recovery. While digitalisation promises efficiency, it also risks exacerbating biases, transparency, and privacy issues. This project will focus on how these effects are visible in the housing experiences of migrants. It will explore the challenges migrants face in accessing safe housing through digital platforms and how technology mediates their interactions with the welfare state.
The project aims to investigate the relationship between digital technologies and housing access for migrants in Tower Hamlets. Many new arrivals to the UK opt to settle in Tower Hamlets, which has also introduced new digital infrastructures as a gateway to accessing housing, including a housing bidding platform.
The study’s purpose is to explore how digital technologies, in particular the adoption of AI and algorithmic decision-making, shape housing access for migrants seeking housing for the first time, and to understand the information sources and decision-making processes involved. This will focus on the lived experiences of migrants, including strategies for navigating, negotiating, and resisting digitised data governance.
The project has three main objectives:
1. Provide empirical data on the role of digital technologies in housing access, how migrants find and share information, organise, and navigate these emergent technologies
2. Develop a new methodology combining participatory community organising (in collaboration with Citizens UK) and digital welfare studies.
3. Contribute insights on digital technologies to challenge local authority and state-level data practices.
Primary Supervisor:
Dr Rachel Humphris