Surveillance practices among migration officers: Online media and LGBTQ+ refugees

Examining Denmark as a case study, and focusing on LGBTQ+ asylum seekers in particular, this article investigates migration authorities’ use of online surveillance to assess claims for asylum. Drawing on interviews with migration officers and asylum seekers, the article describes how asylum seekers’ social media and phone content comes to determine whether they are seen as having a ‘genuine’ or a ‘fraudulent’ LGBTQ+ identity. The article further shows how surveillance implicates asylum seekers’ movement and (im)mobility, thereby ‘fixing’ their identities across time, preventing their ephemeral online engagement and, ultimately, affecting the outcome of their asylum claims. It also argues that the utilisation of surveillance technologies (for example, to review porn consumption and dating applications) favours gay (cis) men, while depriving lesbian, bisexual and transgender asylum seekers of opportunities to prove their identity.