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Paper short abstract

This paper uses ethnography to show how digital imaginaries, embedded in knowledge production processes within migration research institutions in Germany, shape migration governance by turning political and moral classifications into seemingly technical forms of expertise.

Paper long abstract

Germany, particularly after 2015, expanded its migration governance through significant investments in research institutions assigned with producing knowledge on policy initiatives. This paper approaches these institutions not only as neutral knowledge producers, but as ethnographic sites where digital infrastructures, political expectations, and moral imaginaries intersect in the everyday production.

Based on ethnographic research in migration oriented research institutes in Germany, the paper follows how scholars, data analysts, and policy advisors work with digital tools such as databases, statistical software and indicators. The process of producing the knowledge; staff meetings, funding applications, reporting practices, and collaborative projects with state agencies reveal how particular imaginaries like ‘refugee’, ‘integration, or ‘governance’ are negotiated and translated into standard digitalized forms. These practices show how digital systems do not simply store or process information, but actively shape what counts as valid knowledge, which questions become researchable and how knowledge production interact with policy-making processes. For instance, some routine practices such as data cleaning, categorization, indicator-building, and visualization become key sites where political and moral distinctions—between inclusion and exclusion, care and control, deservingness and risk—are materially embedded into governance.

At the same time, the paper argues that research institutions are ambivalent spaces within digitalized governance. While they are deeply entangled in state agendas and funding structures, they also contain ethical concerns and epistemic negotiations. Ethnography basically makes these micro-politics of knowledge production visible, showing how digital expertise can both (un)stabilize polarized understandings of migration in contemporary Germany.