Travelling While Arab: A Podcast and Study of the Effects of Social Media on Free Movement

In August 2019, 17-year-old Harvard Freshman and Palestinian Refugee Ismail Ajjawwi was deported back to Lebanon upon arrival at Boston's Logan Airport by immigration officers for “political points of views that opposed the US” expressed by his friends on his Social Media. His free movement may have been deliberately sabotaged under the guise of contesting political agendas by association through the justification of requiring people to relinquish their personal social media in the interest of security. This paper and accompanying Podcast positively infers that Social Media can be arbitrarily used against Arabs to hinder or restrict free movement due to racial profiling, further discussing what constitutes credible political threat, the virtual degrees of separation between an individual and a ‘non-desirable’, and which countries are moving to protect the digital privacy rights of individuals and citizens. These issues will be addressed using a mix of virtual interviews worldwide with people who have experienced it, studying previous scholastic journals and articles, obtaining statements from immigration professionals and advisors, and creating a platform in the form of a Podcast for individuals to share their own stories and opinions.