Why Do Migrants Feel Digitally Disconnected? The Moment of Separation Created by “Not Using for a While”

Why Read This from an HCI Perspective

This piece is important for HCI/UX because it does not treat technology use by people on the move as something that must always be connected. Instead, it looks at disconnection and even refusal as part of the picture. In particular, it distinguishes not just simple accessibility problems, but situations where people intentionally avoid using technology for safety reasons, as well as cases where they cannot use it due to institutional constraints. This clearly shows that in product design, errors and exceptions should be treated not as edge cases, but as baseline conditions.

CIT's Commentary

A key strength of this study is that it reads non-use not as a failure, but as the outcome of survival strategies and institutional pressure. Especially in high-stakes environments where safety matters—such as migration, detention, and crossing borders—it becomes clear how dangerous the assumption of being “always online” can be. Practically, what matters most are offline-first flows, the ability to reconnect, and recovery after a device is lost. These needs are even more urgent for high-risk services like government, finance, and healthcare than for typical apps. At the same time, rather than importing the framework of a global study as-is, more fine-grained design is needed for ecosystems in Korea where identity verification and account linking are strong—such as Naver, Kakao, and local startups—because non-use can quickly lead to exclusion or distrust. Treating actions like “logging out,” “sharing a device,” and “deleting traces” as normal user behavior rather than exceptions is especially practical.

Questions to Consider While Reading

• Q.In border and migration contexts, what kinds of status indicators and recovery paths should interfaces support for “safe non-use”?
• Q.How can a system naturally allow users’ intentional behaviors—such as not leaving information behind or logging out—while still preserving critical functionality?
• Q.In Korea’s identity-verification-centered services, how can reconnection design be applied to scenarios involving lost or shared devices and temporary interruptions?