News 

I am pleased to share that my new article, “From Hospitality to Hostility: The Evolutionary Securitisation of Rohingya Migration in Bangladesh,” has been published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 🌏

In this article, I examine how Bangladesh’s response to Rohingya migration has evolved from humanitarian reception to institutionalised securitisation over nearly five decades, and what this transformation means for the everyday lives of Rohingya refugees. 📚

Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2026.2664796

This publication is part of my ongoing project, Securitization of Migration in South Asia: Implications for Rohingyas (SOMISA). Learn more about the SOMISA project here: https://sites.google.com/view/projectsomisa

線上講座｜Conceptualizing Digital Governance in the Age of Semiconductors: A Critical Review of Keywords and Concepts

從關鍵詞出發：晶片時代的數位治理

The Chip Era and Digital Governance Forum 10

Date and Time: December 3, 2025, from 14:00 to 16:00, Taipei Time (GMT+8)

Format: Online

Online meeting Link: https://meet.google.com/nkv-uhmz-wgk

Forum Language: English

Synopsis

This forum critically examines keywords and concepts related to digital governance, surveillance systems, and citizenship politics. These terms serve as entry points for exploring how political discourses—both theoretical and methodological—engage with rapid developments in digital communication technologies during the chip era. The forum investigates how digital surveillance technologies reshape power relations across Asian contexts, transcending traditional boundaries of state, market, and territory. Liu analyzes how China’s “surveillance capitalism” diverges from Western models through a distinctive state-corporate nexus, where technology giants build infrastructures for population management rather than commercial personalization. This surveillant assemblage transforms migrant data into governing capital, fundamentally redefining relationships among surveillance, labor, and citizenship. Tsering critically reviews the concept of “societies of control” and examines how the Chinese government maintains long-arm jurisdiction over the Tibetan diaspora through WeChat. Continuous monitoring, censorship, and intimidation via digital platforms fragment refugees into individuals, eroding the protection once provided by physical distance. Verma further expands the discussion of “digital governance” by examining its operation in the context of Rohingya refugees in India. Although often framed as promoting efficiency, transparency, and service delivery, digital governance increasingly functions through assemblages of biometrics, surveillance networks, and data analytics that reconfigure state–citizen relations. For refugees positioned at the margins of legal recognition, these infrastructures become deeply coercive: biometric databases, border surveillance systems, and digital identification regimes render Rohingyas hyper-visible yet rightless, categorizing them as security risks rather than humanitarian subjects.

Keywords:

Surveillance Capitalism

Societies of Control, WeChat, and the Tibetan Diaspora

Digital Governance and Rohingyas - By Monika Verma