Drawing a map in the sand: locating an ethics of care in the ICT-related migration practices of older volunteers in the US southwest

Critical migration studies have highlighted the risks of using digital technologies in the space of migration, underlying its implication for migrants’ privacy rights, government surveillance, and information capitalism. In U.S. Cus-toms and Border Protection’s Tucson sector, stretching across Arizona, one of the busiest and most dangerous borders in the USA, volunteer organizations work to prevent the death of unauthorized migrants undertaking the journey through the Sonoran Desert. Volunteers, typically elderly, study and map migratory trails to provide water where it is likely to be found by migrants. They employ a com-bination of paper-based and dated, yet sophisticated technologies for gathering essential data to support this potentially life-saving work. In this article, we dis-cuss their information and data practices, and we argue that their approach is an example of the application of an ethics of care to an informational space. Based on interviews and participant observations, we suggest that volunteers’ general refusal to adopt more efficient data practices indicate both a resistance to change from already ingrained practices, as well as an application of caring ethics within the field of migration and information for the pursuit of social justice.