Abstract This article critically examines the role of mobile technology, particularly smartphones, in the lives of migrants in the Matamoros camp on the US-Mexico border. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2023, it highlights the diverse ways migrants engage with technology under conditions of structural subalternity. The analysis moves beyond viewing technology as merely a survival tool or an extension of sovereign control, revealing how smartphones serve as multifaceted instruments—for navigating bureaucracy, maintaining social ties, cultivating emotional resilience, and engaging in leisure. These uses reflect broader societal norms and challenge migration studies’ portrayals of migrants as either passive techno-users or exceptional cases of connectivity. Instead, the article foregrounds the ordinary, ambivalent nature of technological engagement, showing how migrants negotiate autonomy within and against the constraints of displacement, breaking with reductive binaries such as political life versus “bare life” or resistance versus subjection.
Ganz et al. (Tue,) studied this question.