Migration Governance and Data Saturation: Is Less More?

The conventional wisdom among migration policy practitioners is that migration governance faces a problem of data scarcity. Against this backdrop, various stakeholders such as international organizations emphasize the need to leverage the latest advances in digital technology and the numerous sources of digital data to quantify, monitor and predict previously invisible processes, practices and vulnerable populations. In other words, the datafication of migration appears as a panacea which promises an affordable, efficient, timely and objective collection, analysis and dissemination of an ever-increasing volume and variety of data relevant to migration. Yet this approach of data maximization overwhelms policy practitioners with conflicting information. It also sustains an increasingly costly arms race for information which burdens international organizations and threatens the human rights of vulnerable populations. This brief addresses the policy problem of data saturation and recommends the implementation of data minimization. This principle requires to collect only the minimum amount of data necessary to accomplish a carefully predetermined goal. Data minimization would not solely protect the rights of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons. It would also tackle the increasingly unwieldy and dysfunctional data saturation which diminishes the value and usefulness of data and generates additional data management costs and risks. With the support of the private sector and academia, the international organizations comprising the UN Network on Migration could effectively implement and showcase data minimization.