The Workshop on Data Migration and Mobilities: Towards a New Research Agenda will take place at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), Estonia, on 8–9 April 2026. This event seeks to critically examine how data circulates, transforms, and shapes societies, while opening new conceptual and methodological directions in the study of data flows.
Rethinking Data as Migration and Mobility
Data is often described through metaphors such as flows, streams, or journeys. These framings highlight its circulation but reveal little about the social mechanisms of movement, replication, and transformation. Recent scholarship has introduced the concepts of:
- Data Migration – examining data through analogies with human mobility and social transformation.
- Data Mobilities – focusing on replication, proliferation, and transformation within data sharing processes.
Together, these perspectives form a new research agenda that explores the paradoxes of data movement: How can data be described as frictionless yet encounter restrictions? When does data sharing empower communities, and when does it deepen inequalities? How do these processes intersect with governance, geopolitics, and data capitalism?
Key Themes and Topics
The workshop invites contributions from across disciplines to engage with these critical questions. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):
- Socio-technical infrastructures shaping data migration and mobilities
- Data imaginaries and paradoxes of circulation, openness, and control
- The entanglement of data migration with geopolitics, governance, and global inequalities
- Everyday consequences of data mobility for individuals, communities, and institutions
- Comparative perspectives between data migration and human mobilities
- Methodological innovations for tracing data migration as a process of social transformation
Submission Guidelines
Researchers are invited to submit abstracts of up to 250 words that may present ongoing or completed research, conceptual reflections, case studies, or position papers.
- Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2025
- Notification of acceptance: November 2025
- Submission email: anu.masso@taltech.ee
The workshop particularly welcomes work-in-progress contributions and interdisciplinary approaches.
Publication Opportunity
Selected contributions from the workshop may be considered for inclusion in a special issue or an edited volume (details to be announced).
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