Project summary

This project addresses the critical and underexplored issue of intersectional digital privacy and trust faced by refugees, asylum seekers, and other marginalised migrant populations in both the UK and Australia. While regulatory frameworks such as the UK GDPR and Australia’s Privacy Act have made significant strides in protecting general user privacy, they often fall short in addressing the specific vulnerabilities and contextual risks experienced by displaced populations [1,2 3]. These groups face unique threats, including profiling, exclusion from services, financial loss, harassment, targeted scamming, and surveillance, when their digital identities and behaviours are exposed or exploited in online environments.

Vulnerable individuals are frequently targeted - both intentionally and inadvertently - through opaque consent mechanisms, dark patterns, case workers, and data brokerage systems [4, 5, 6]. Such practices can lead to physical, social, and legal harms, particularly in hostile or over-policed policy environments. For instance, the UK Home Office has come under scrutiny for using social media monitoring and third-party data analytics to inform immigration decisions, raising questions around transparency, proportionality, and ethical use of data [1, 2]. In Australia, significant breaches of asylum seekers' personal records [3] and the concerns arising from national privacy surveys [4] reinforce the urgency of this research. These findings highlight a clear demand for inclusive, understandable, and user-centered privacy protections in both countries.

Proposed Approach:

This project proposes a mixed-methods, collaborative research initiative that brings together Australian and UK researchers with expertise in human-centered privacy, digital security, and social justice. Specifically:

1. Systemized Review (Led by Australia): Australian investigators will lead a systematic review of relevant academic literature on privacy issues within marginalised migrant communities, usable privacy studies of marginalised groups, and existing privacy-preserving technologies and frameworks.

2. Collaborative SoK and Research Design (Joint UK-Australia): Through a series of reciprocal visits, the research team will co-author a Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) paper on the privacy needs of marginalised migrant communities in Australia and the UK and the state of technical “usable privacy” solutions. The team will also co-develop a roadmap for larger joint research proposals.

[1] Shijing He, Xiao Zhan, Yaxiong Lei, Yueyan Liu, Ruba Abu-Salma, and Jose Such. "Exploring the privacy and security challenges faced by migrant domestic workers in chinese smart homes." In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-18. 2025.

[2] Eimaan Saqib, Shijing He, Junghyun Choy, Ruba Abu-Salma, Jose Such, Julia Bernd, and Mobin Javed. "Bystander Privacy in Smart Homes: A Systematic Review of Concerns and Solutions." ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (2025).

[3] Ruba Abu-Salma, Reem Talhouk, Jose Such, Claudia Aradau, Francesca Meloni, Shijing He, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed et al. "Diverse Migration Journeys and Security Practices: Engaging with Longitudinal Perspectives of Migration and (Digital) Security." In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-7. 2023.

[4] Alisa Frik, Xiao Zhan, Noura Abdi, and Julia Bernd. "Who Cares? Contextual Privacy Judgments from Owner and Bystander Perspectives in Different Smart Home Situations." Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (2025).

[5] Tess Despres, Marcelino Ayala Constantino, Naomi Zacarias Lizola, Gerardo Sánchez Romero, Shijing He, Xiao Zhan, Noura Abdi, Ruba Abu-Salma, Jose Such, and Julia Bernd. " My Best Friend's Husband Sees and Knows Everything": A Cross-Contextual and Cross-Country Approach to Understanding Smart Home Privacy." Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (2024).

[6] Julia Slupska, Selina Cho, Marissa Begonia, Ruba Abu-Salma, Nayanatara Prakash, and Mallika Balakrishnan. "They Look at Vulnerability and Use That to Abuse You': Participatory Threat Modelling with Migrant Domestic Workers." In 31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 22), pp. 323-340. 2022.