Confronting Asylum Decision-making through Prototyping Sensemaking of Data and Participation

Abstract

Despite decades of legal harmonization, the chance of receiving asylum varies significantly across Europe among people from the same country of origin. The research outlined in this paper is part of an interdisciplinary research project focused on understanding asylum decision-making and outcome variations across the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark). The project will eventually cover over 100,000 asylum decisions. The research outlined in this paper aims to push agendas on data science in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) through prototyping context and participation as part of raising questions to the data and promoting data literacy. Combining the application of Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) with participatory methods (e.g. critically designed artefacts) enable us to 1) move beyond “obvious” ML-application areas, 2) through sensemaking of data with stakeholders, and 3) co-develop approaches to data science from a CSCW-perspective.