Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the causes and characteristics of an informal and "illegitimate" digital economy among forcibly displaced people, who must often adopt unsafe and informal workarounds to access digital financial services, digital work, and other digital tools and services.

Paper long abstract:

A lack of economic rights and restricted access to formal employment frequently relegate refugees and asylum seekers to the margins of economies, leading to informal and insecure forms of finance, work, and livelihood generation. A seemingly less bureaucratic and discriminatory world of digital services potentially offers a more inclusive alternative: mobile money and digital financial services could help refugees bypass exclusive banking, while online freelance work offers a source of income in the absence of local employment. But digital economies and digital finance are often not as accessible to refugees as they may seem, because digital inclusion is increasingly tied to formal requirements forcibly displaced people often cannot meet, such as the need for identity verification. These and other formal requirements effectively push many refugees towards insecure and informal workarounds. Their exclusion from digital and financial services, and from digital labour markets more generally, has fuelled the spread of an informal digital economy – often involving informal intermediaries and brokers – that puts refugees at increased risk of exploitation and cybercrime, while exposing them to many other potential harms. Building on research on the role of digital finance and work among refugees across a variety of national and transnational contexts, we aim to delineate the causes and characteristics of this digital refugee “shadow economy” and its implications for the rights and safety of forcibly displaced people in need of protection.