Mirca Madianou is Professor in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and co‑director of the Migrant Futures Institute. Her research examines digital technologies in contexts of migration, crisis, and humanitarianism. In this interview, she explores how communication infrastructures reorder relationships of care and obligation across distance, particularly among transnational families. What appears as connection often carries a hidden asymmetry: migrants are expected to remain emotionally and materially present through digital means, even as broader systems of inequality remain intact. Her recent work on “technocolonialism” extends this insight, arguing that humanitarian technologies—AI, biometrics, data systems—frequently reproduce colonial power relations under the banner of innovation. Throughout the exchange, she draws attention to how intimacy, governance, and infrastructure intersect, revealing the ethical stakes embedded in everyday acts of communication.
