Digital Humanitarianism and Migrant Precarity: Martynka and the Newcomer App

Abstract

Digital humanitarian platforms have become increasingly visible in migrant support ecosystems, offering guidance and referrals where access to services is fragmented and uneven. This article examines how digital humanitarianism reconfigures responsibilisation and gendered precarity in migration governance through a comparative, document-based analysis of Martynka in Poland and the Newcomer App in Canada. Drawing on the feminist political economy and digital humanitarianism scholarship, it conceptualises these tools as digital interfaces that render integration legible as an informational problem and improve navigability within governance systems marked by conditional inclusion, uneven service coordination and donor-dependent civil society funding. Across the cases, integration-support labour becomes feminised most visibly in Martynka’s women-centred support ecosystem, while the Canadian case highlights how gendered labour-market inequalities and caregiving constraints shape the conditions in which broadly targeted self-navigation tools are expected to work. The article also identifies ethical and privacy challenges associated with reliance on third-party digital infrastructures. Overall, digital humanitarianism emerges as both a pragmatic response to governance gaps and a mechanism through which responsibilisation is reproduced in an interface form.

Introduction

Contemporary migration governance increasingly relies on responsibilisation as a governing strategy, shifting aspects of managing legal precarity, integration, and access to services onto migrants themselves, civil society actors and digital infrastructures alongside state institutions. This shift is embedded in governance logics that emphasise flexibility, temporariness and the delegation of social support to non-state actors. While responsibilisation affects migrants broadly, its gendered dimensions disproportionately burden women, who are often expected to absorb unpaid care and coordination work while demonstrating self-sufficiency in both physical and digital spaces (Bledsoe & Smith, 2025; Enloe, 2014; Parreñas, 2015). Migrant women, particularly mothers, can face heightened precariousness due to restrictive immigration rules, segmented labour markets and uneven access to institutional protections (Constable, 2015). The feminist political economy scholarship has long documented how migration governance reinforces gendered divisions of labour, especially in feminised care sectors, where migrant women are concentrated in precarious forms of employment (Baines et al., 2014; Parreñas, 2015). Yet responsibilisation extends beyond formal work, shaping how migrants access services, navigate bureaucracy and sustain community support in contexts of institutional fragmentation.

Digital humanitarian platforms have become increasingly visible components of migrant support ecosystems. In this article, digital humanitarianism refers not simply to ‘humanitarian work online’, but to forms of assistance mediated through digital interfaces that reshape how need is identified, communicated and addressed (Johns, 2023). I use digital humanitarianism broadly to include platform-mediated assistance that addresses protection and settlement needs in contexts of governance gaps, even when framed as ‘integration’ rather than emergency response. Here, interface refers to the user-facing digital environments, such as apps, chatbots and social media systems, through which migrants access information, services and support. These interfaces structure how institutional complexity is encountered and navigated in everyday practice. As Johns (2023) argues, digital humanitarianism often renders crisis and vulnerability legible as informational problems, gaps to be addressed through guidance, mapping, referrals and coordination tools. In migration contexts characterised by uneven service provision, these interface-mediated supports can make complex systems more navigable while also positioning migrants as the actors responsible for translating information into protection, stability and access to rights (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014). Digital humanitarian platforms thus operate simultaneously as support infrastructures and as sites where responsibilisation is enacted in practice. I treat these interfaces as governance sites because they shape what counts as need, what becomes actionable information and what responsibilities are shifted onto users.

As migration governance becomes increasingly mediated through digital coordination tools (Gottardo et al., 2024; Nalbandian, 2022), understanding how these platforms redistribute responsibility for accessing protection and services becomes both analytically and politically significant. If integration is increasingly organised through interface-mediated self-navigation, questions of accountability, equity and rights risk being reframed as matters of information access rather than institutional provision.

This article examines how digital humanitarian platforms function as intermediaries within migration governance through a comparative, document-based analysis of two civil society digital initiatives developed within migrant support ecosystems: Martynka in Poland (MartynkaHelp, 2023) and the Newcomer App in Canada (ValuesFirst AI, n.d.). Both platforms provide practical guidance and referrals for migrants navigating complex institutional environments, and both emerge in governance contexts shaped by conditional inclusion, uneven coordination and reliance on civil society provision. The existing scholarship has examined responsibilisation in migration policy and gendered precarity in temporary protection and tiered migration regimes (Ilcan & Rygiel, 2015), including work highlighting the absence of gender perspectives in the rollout of protection frameworks such as the EU Temporary Protection Directive (Lashchuk, 2023). Less attention, however, has been paid to how platform-mediated support infrastructures translate these governance dynamics into everyday practices of self-navigation, community coordination and unpaid support work. Rather than re-evaluating protection frameworks as such, this article traces how platform materials and communications convert governance gaps into the routine labour of navigating fragmented migration systems.

The article makes three contributions. First, it conceptualises digital humanitarian platforms as governance infrastructures: interface-mediated arrangements that can improve navigability while leaving the underlying institutional organisation of precarity intact, thereby reproducing responsibilisation in a platform-mediated form (Ilcan & Rygiel, 2015; Johns, 2023). Second, it extends the feminist political economy into digital migration governance by examining how integration-support labour can become gendered within platform ecosystems. This dynamic is most visible in Martynka’s explicitly women-oriented organisational and support infrastructure, where migrant women appear as founders, organisers, volunteers and intended users (MartynkaHelp, 2023). In contrast, the Newcomer App is developed by a migrant researcher in collaboration with newcomer-serving organisations, but it is not gender-targeted; the Canadian case therefore highlights how gendered labour-market inequalities and caregiving constraints shape the contexts in which broadly targeted integration tools are developed and used (Ferrer & Dhatt, 2023; Momani et al., 2022). Third, through comparison across Poland’s implementation of the Temporary Protection Directive and Canada’s tiered migration system, the article shows how digital humanitarian initiatives arise within distinct but structurally similar governance environments characterised by conditional inclusion, fragmented service delivery and donor-dependent civil society funding.

Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative, document-based analysis drawing on publicly available materials, including platform websites and social media communications, policy and programme documentation, civil society reports, funding announcements and secondary academic literature. This approach allows the article to examine how responsibilisation and gendered precarity are articulated through platform practices and public communications, and how these practices are shaped by broader governance contexts. The article proceeds as follows. The next section outlines a feminist political economy framework for analysing responsibilisation and its gendered effects. The subsequent sections situate Martynka and the Newcomer App in their respective governance contexts and examine how each platform structures self-navigation and support work through interface-mediated practices. The discussion synthesises insights from both cases to argue that digital humanitarianism plays a dual role: it can improve access to information and coordination while also reconfiguring responsibilisation through platform infrastructures. The final section considers implications for data governance and accountability in migrant support platforms.

Theoretical Framework: Digital Humanitarianism, Interfaces and Responsibilisation

This article draws on feminist political economy to analyse how responsibilisation operates within digital humanitarianism and contemporary migration governance. Rather than treating digital humanitarian platforms as neutral tools for information delivery, the framework conceptualises them as governance infrastructures that mediate access to services, shape expectations of self-reliance and redistribute integration-related labour across migrants, civil society actors and technological systems.

Building on the scholarship on responsibilisation (Ilcan & Rygiel, 2015; Rose, 1999) and digital humanitarianism (Burns, 2015; Johns, 2023), the framework examines how platform-mediated support can simultaneously mitigate coordination gaps and reproduce structural inequalities (Kaun & Uldam, 2018). The feminist political economy provides the analytical lens for understanding how these governance shifts are experienced unevenly, particularly by migrant women, whose paid and unpaid labour often sustains integration processes in contexts of limited institutional support (Bakker & Gill, 2003; Kofman & Raghuram, 2015; Parreñas, 2015). The framework is organised into three interconnected strands: responsibilisation within neoliberal migration governance, the constrained role of civil society actors in outsourced service provision and gendered inequalities in digital access and integration labour. Together, these strands illuminate how digital humanitarian platforms function not only as tools of assistance but also as sites where responsibilised migration governance is enacted in everyday practice.

Responsibilisation as an Interface Work

Within neoliberal governance frameworks, responsibilisation describes the shifting of obligations for protection, welfare and integration from the state to individuals, civil society organisations and other non-state actors (Ilcan & Rygiel, 2015; Rose, 1999). Rather than providing comprehensive institutional support, states increasingly govern through delegation and conditionality, framing mobility and integration as matters of adaptability, employability and self-sufficiency (Feher, 2009). In practice, this reorients access to rights towards individual capacity, such as the ability to secure work, interpret eligibility rules, navigate bureaucracy and comply with changing administrative requirements, rather than towards stable institutional guarantees.

This article builds on the digital humanitarianism scholarship to clarify how responsibilisation is enacted through digital interfaces. I treat interfaces as governance sites because they structure what counts as a ‘need’, what information becomes actionable and what responsibility is shifted onto users. Digital humanitarian platforms often render crisis and vulnerability legible as informational problems, gaps that can be addressed through guidance, referrals, updates and procedural advice (Johns, 2023). When migrant support is organised around these interface-mediated practices, the work of integration becomes a set of user-facing tasks. These include locating services, interpreting eligibility requirements, translating policy updates and assembling pathways to housing, employment or healthcare from dispersed sources of information. Platforms can therefore improve navigability while also reinforcing the expectation that migrants themselves must translate information into protection and stability.

Responsibilisation is also gendered. In this article, the feminisation of responsibilisation refers to the uneven distribution of unpaid integration-related labour and the social expectation that women will perform it. This includes caregiving, translation, community coordination and digital support work in contexts where institutional provision is limited. Feminist political economy scholarship has long shown how women’s labour is relied upon yet rendered invisible within governance arrangements (Enloe, 2014; Folbre, 2006; Parreñas, 2015). In migration contexts, women often absorb the everyday coordination work of integration for families and communities, acting as informal caseworkers, translators and organisers (Enloe, 2014). This dynamic is empirically visible in women-centred initiatives such as Martynka (Kyrychenko, 2024). In broadly targeted digital integration tools, however, it is better understood as a structural constraint shaping who can take up self-navigation pathways, under what conditions and with what trade-offs, including time poverty, caregiving responsibilities and labour-market segmentation.

Seen in this way, digital humanitarian platforms are not only channels for delivering assistance. They are also governance infrastructures that can operationalise responsibilisation by converting institutional fragmentation into routine practices of self-navigation. While such platforms may ease access to information, they rarely alter the underlying distribution of responsibility for securing rights, services and stability within migration governance systems.

Constrained Civil Society and Outsourced Governance

The expansion of digital humanitarian initiatives is closely connected to the broader restructuring of welfare provision under neoliberal migration governance (Darling, 2016; Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004; Fassin, 2012). As states increasingly rely on civil society actors to deliver settlement and integration services, nongovernmental organisations, volunteer networks and migrant-led initiatives have become central intermediaries in migration support systems (Evans et al., 2005). This reliance is often framed as partnership or innovation, yet it frequently reflects the delegation of responsibilities without the corresponding authority or stable resources.

Research on nonprofit governance in Canada shows how settlement and integration services were progressively contracted out to community organisations, transforming many civil society actors into service-delivery extensions of the state (Evans et al., 2005; Richmond & Shields, 2005). These organisations are expected to respond flexibly to migrant needs while operating under short-term funding cycles and strict accountability requirements. Such conditions can limit their capacity to advocate for structural policy changes and can produce what scholars describe as an ‘advocacy chill’, in which organisations prioritise service delivery over political engagement (Evans et al., 2005). Similar dynamics are visible in Europe, where migration-focused NGOs often depend on short-term EU or philanthropic funding that constrains long-term planning and organisational independence (Carrera & Ineli-Ciger, 2023; Vandevoordt & Verschraegen, 2019).

Digital humanitarian initiatives frequently emerge from this constrained civil society environment. Because they rely on project-based funding, volunteer labour and existing digital infrastructures, these platforms often function as adaptive responses to fragmented service landscapes rather than as mechanisms for institutional reforms (Burns, 2015; Meier, 2015). Martynka, for example, has experienced periods of financial instability, including the suspension of psychological counselling services following funding shortfalls (MartynkaHelp, 2023, 2025). The Newcomer App similarly operates within a decentralised integration ecosystem, reflecting the partnership-based and research-funded model through which many digital migrant-support tools are developed and implemented (University of Waterloo, 2024). These examples illustrate how digital humanitarian platforms can help coordinate services while remaining structurally dependent on unstable funding environments.

This pattern reflects a broader paradox in contemporary migration governance. Even as states delegate elements of migrant support to civil society actors, they retain control through funding structures, regulatory frameworks and programme eligibility rules. Digital humanitarian platforms, therefore, often function as coordination infrastructures that help manage gaps in service provision rather than as actors capable of transforming the governance arrangements that produce those gaps. In this sense, digital humanitarianism can be understood as both a product of outsourced governance and a mechanism through which responsibilisation is operationalised in practice.

Chronic funding pressures facing civil society organisations involved in migration and humanitarian support further shape the sustainability of digital humanitarian initiatives (Brown, 2025; Dowdell et al., 2024; Keaten, 2024). Persistent shortages can limit the continuity of services provided through platforms such as Martynka, including specialist supports like legal aid or psychosocial counselling (ACBAR, 2022; UNHCR, 2025). From a feminist political economy perspective, these funding dynamics are not gender-neutral. Civil society organisations delivering migrant support are often staffed and led by women, and the instability of project-based funding can reproduce gendered patterns of undervalued care and coordination labour (England et al., 2002; FAIR SHARE of Women Leaders, 2021; Kofman & Raghuram, 2015).

Gendered Integration Work and Digital Access

A feminist political economy perspective highlights how responsibilised migration governance relies on gendered patterns of labour and access. Migration regimes depend not only on migrant labour in formal economies but also on unpaid social reproduction that sustains households, communities and support infrastructures (Bakker & Gill, 2003; Kofman & Raghuram, 2015; Parreñas, 2015). Migrant women are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage care and service sectors and often perform unpaid coordination and caregiving work within families and migrant communities (Baines et al., 2014; Enloe, 2014; Parreñas, 2015). These forms of labour are frequently invisible within policy frameworks that prioritise economic self-sufficiency while overlooking the social conditions required to achieve it.

Digital humanitarian initiatives operate within these gendered labour arrangements. Platforms that provide guidance, referrals and coordination tools often depend on community participation and informal support networks to function effectively (Burns, 2015; Meier, 2015). In many migrant communities, women play central roles in translating information, moderating online groups, assisting newcomers with administrative processes and organising mutual aid (Kofman & Raghuram, 2015). These practices demonstrate resilience and solidarity, but they also illustrate how integration-related labour can be redistributed onto migrant communities themselves, often along gendered lines. In this sense, digital humanitarianism does not create gendered inequalities so much as it becomes embedded within existing structures of social reproduction.

At the same time, gendered inequalities shape who can access and benefit from digital support tools. Research on digital inclusion shows persistent gender gaps in access to mobile devices, internet connectivity and digital literacy, particularly in displacement and migration contexts (Crabtree & Obadi, 2024; World Bank, 2023). Women in displaced communities may face financial constraints, limited technical training, time poverty due to caregiving responsibilities and social norms that restrict technology use. In some cases, mobile phones or internet access are controlled by male family members, limiting women’s independent access to digital information and services (Crabtree & Obadi, 2024). These barriers complicate assumptions that digital tools automatically expand access to support.

Digital humanitarian platforms often assume users who are consistently connected, digitally literate and able to translate information into action. Yet migrants navigating precarious legal status, unstable housing or caregiving responsibilities may struggle to meet these assumptions. Evidence from digital migration tools in other contexts demonstrates how low digital literacy, limited connectivity and language barriers can exclude vulnerable users from accessing support services (Baptista & Moloney, 2024). Digital humanitarianism can therefore reproduce inequalities in access even as it seeks to improve coordination and information sharing (Kaun & Uldam, 2018).

These dynamics connect directly to responsibilisation. When migrants are encouraged to rely on digital tools to navigate services and rights, the work of integration increasingly includes managing digital access, literacy and information interpretation (Sanlier Yüksel, 2022). For migrant women already balancing caregiving responsibilities and labour-market barriers, these expectations can extend the existing forms of unpaid coordination work into digital spaces. Digital humanitarian platforms thus operate within gendered social infrastructures in which the ability to benefit from technological innovation is unevenly distributed.

From this perspective, digital humanitarianism should be understood not only as a technological development but also as part of the social organisation of integration labour. Platforms such as Martynka and the Newcomer App illustrate how digital tools can support migrants while simultaneously relying on gendered patterns of care, coordination and access that structure migration governance more broadly.

Methodology: Document-based Feminist Analysis

This article employs a qualitative, document-based analysis of two digital humanitarian platforms: Martynka in Poland and the Newcomer App in Canada. The analysis draws on publicly available materials, including policy documents, platform websites, social media content, civil society reports, funding announcements and secondary academic literature. Because the Newcomer App is still in the early stages of field deployment, publicly available documentation about the platform remains limited compared to Martynka’s more established digital presence. The analysis of the Canadian case therefore draws primarily on the project website, institutional announcements and published descriptions of the tool’s intended functions and design.

The cases are compared as two instances of interface-mediated migrant support emerging in distinct migration governance systems that share conditions of fragmented service provision and responsibilised navigation. Using a feminist political economy lens, the study examines how these platforms are represented in public communications and how responsibilisation and gendered precarity are articulated through platform materials and the broader migration governance contexts in which they operate.

Governance Contexts: Fragmentation, Conditional Inclusion and Digital Mediation

Both Poland and Canada illustrate how migration governance frameworks organised around temporariness, discretion and fragmented service provision create conditions in which migrants must rely on civil society intermediaries to access support. In these contexts, digital humanitarian platforms emerge not as substitutes for state institutions but as interface-mediated responses to gaps in coordination, information and access. Examining these governance environments helps explain how platforms such as Martynka and the Newcomer App translate policy fragmentation into everyday practices of self-navigation and community-based support. The following sections situate each platform within its national migration governance context, showing how conditional inclusion and uneven service coordination contribute to the growing importance of digital and civil society intermediaries.

Poland’s Temporary Protection and the Martynka Platform

Poland’s response to the Ukrainian refugee influx under the EU Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) illustrates a discretionary model of protection shaped by local administrative practices and uneven service provision (Duszczyk et al., 2023; Kubiciel-Lodzińska & Solga, 2023). The TPD, activated in 2022 for people displaced from Ukraine, formally grants eligible individuals temporary residency and access to employment, healthcare and social assistance across EU member states. However, Poland’s implementation has produced uneven access to these entitlements across municipalities and institutions (Kubiciel-Lodzińska & Solga, 2023). From the beginning, women and children comprised the majority of arrivals (UN Women & CARE International, 2022), yet the protection framework included limited gender-specific support measures. Displaced women have faced particular challenges securing childcare, stable housing and employment compatible with caregiving responsibilities. As Lashchuk (2023) argues, the absence of a gender perspective in the TPD’s rollout has contributed to displaced women’s concentration in precarious sectors such as domestic work and informal caregiving. Early analyses similarly observed displaced women from Ukraine becoming over-represented in low-paid care and service occupations in Poland (Gotlib et al., 2023; Lashchuk, 2023).

These gaps in formal support have coincided with increased reliance on civil society organisations and community-based initiatives. A proliferation of NGOs, volunteer networks and online communities emerged to assist Ukrainians in Poland with legal documentation, housing, employment and psychosocial support (Prykhodchenko & Ivashko, 2024; Tange & Radecka, 2025). Martynka is one such initiative: a civil society-led digital platform created by a Ukrainian migrant woman for displaced Ukrainian women (Kyrychenko, 2024). Martynka provides a centralised website and social media presence, offering legal guidance, employment information, Polish-language resources and referrals to services (MartynkaHelp, 2023, 2026; Wierzcholska, 2023). The platform functions as a grassroots integration hub, helping navigate administrative processes and access available support services.

Martynka’s role as a digital humanitarian intermediary is visible in its platform infrastructure and public communications. Operating primarily through a Telegram chatbot and social media channels, the platform provides real-time multilingual guidance on legal rights, employment resources and access to social services. Users can receive referrals to legal aid providers, connections to psychosocial support services and safety guidance related to risks such as trafficking or gender-based violence (Jeziorek, 2025; MartynkaHelp, 2023, 2026; Wierzcholska, 2023). Platform data shared publicly indicate that Martynka’s hotline assists approximately 130 refugees and migrants per month, addressing crises including workplace exploitation, mental health emergencies and housing insecurity, and that the platform responded to nearly 1,000 requests for assistance in 2023 (MartynkaHelp, 2024). These activities illustrate how Martynka functions as an interface that translates administrative complexity into actionable guidance for displaced women navigating Poland’s protection system.

Martynka’s development also reflects the funding realities of civil society-led digital humanitarian initiatives. The platform has experienced periods of financial instability, including the suspension of psychological counselling services following funding shortfalls (MartynkaHelp, 2023, 2025). At the same time, Martynka received approximately $250,000 in philanthropic funding in 2025 through the Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Recovery Fund to support legal assistance, case management and safeguarding services for Ukrainian refugees in Poland, particularly women in vulnerable situations (Dudley, 2025). This combination of intermittent funding challenges and project-based grants illustrates both the importance of the platform within refugee support ecosystems and the structural precarity of initiatives that depend on donor funding.

Rather than replacing state institutions, Martynka operates within gaps created by uneven policy implementation and limited coordination of integration services. The platform can provide information about work permits, childcare options or available benefits, but it cannot alter the temporary nature of legal protection or the structural shortage of childcare services. In this sense, Martynka illustrates how digital humanitarian initiatives can complement existing governance arrangements while also reflecting broader dynamics of responsibilisation in migration support systems. Migrants are often expected to navigate complex administrative environments with assistance from civil society and digital tools, rather than through comprehensive institutional support (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014). As beneficial as initiatives such as Martynka may be, they are limited in their ability to improve the structural conditions their platform users continue to face.

The gendered dimensions of this dynamic are particularly visible in Martynka’s organisational structure and user base. The platform was founded by a Ukrainian woman, primarily serves women and relies heavily on women volunteers and community contributors, as reflected in its public communications and organisational structure. This reflects how migrant women often assume central roles in sustaining community support infrastructures during displacement (Kofman & Raghuram, 2015). While such initiatives demonstrate resilience and agency, they also reveal how integration-related support work becomes feminised, extending women’s caregiving responsibilities into digital and community-based forms of assistance. Martynka thus operates as both a lifeline for displaced women and an example of how migrant-led support initiatives emerge within broader systems of conditional and uneven protection.

Canada’s Tiered Migration System and the Newcomer App

Canada’s migration regime offers a contrasting but conceptually similar scenario of conditional inclusion shaped by temporariness and administrative complexity. Over the past two decades, Canada has increasingly relied on temporary migration programmes, producing a multi-tiered system in which migrants hold different rights and levels of access to services depending on their legal status (Akbar, 2022; Rajkumar et al., 2012). Since the 2000s, the number of temporary residents, including foreign workers, international students and asylum claimants, has grown substantially, making temporariness a defining feature of Canada’s labour market (Fudge & MacPhail, 2009; Siemiatycki, 2010). Even where transitions to permanent residence occur, they are often structured through prolonged periods of temporary status that condition access to rights and services. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) reports that between January and November 2025, more than 177,000 former temporary residents became permanent residents, accounting for roughly 48% of all permanent admissions during that period (Government of Canada, 2026). Rather than diminishing the significance of temporary migration, these transitions demonstrate how temporariness has become institutionalised as a central mechanism of migration governance in Canada.

A hallmark of Canada’s approach is the delegation of integration support across federal, provincial and civil-society actors, producing variations in service availability by geography and immigration category (Roberts, 2020). Eligibility for language training, employment services or health coverage can differ depending on a migrant’s legal status and province of residence. Evaluations of Canada’s resettlement programmes have also identified coordination challenges, confusion among stakeholders regarding programme procedures and the need to improve the awareness of available supports among refugees and sponsors (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2016). Ukrainians arriving under the Canada–Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) programme were eligible for certain temporary support measures, but civil-society organisations reported confusion regarding the eligibility for settlement services and uneven access across jurisdictions (Cruzat, 2025; Jeziorek, 2024b). These findings reflect broader challenges in navigating Canada’s multi-level migration governance system.

The gaps and uncertainties in this system have coincided with the development of digital tools intended to help migrants navigate available resources. The Newcomer App, developed by Edith Law in collaboration with newcomer-serving organisations, is one such initiative (Law, 2023; University of Waterloo, 2024; ValuesFirst AI, n.d.). The app aggregates resources related to healthcare, housing, employment, transportation and legal or social services (University of Waterloo, 2024). Platform materials emphasise procedural guidance intended to help users independently navigate unfamiliar systems, including information on applying for private health insurance, connecting with community organisations and accessing multilingual support resources (University of Waterloo, 2024). By mapping Canada’s decentralised integration landscape and offering AI-enabled recommendations, the Newcomer App is framed as a tool that helps newcomers ‘navigate critical health and social services’ (University of Waterloo, 2024). In this sense, the app functions primarily as a navigational interface that translates dispersed institutional information into individualised guidance for migrants. As it continues to be rolled out, specific platform data remain unavailable.

Like Martynka in Poland, however, the Newcomer App operates within existing governance structures rather than transforming them. The app can guide users towards employment resources, training opportunities or local services, but the responsibility for assembling an integration pathway remains largely with the migrant. As Gillespie (2018) notes in a broader discussion of digital mediation, technological tools that help individuals manage precarious conditions do not necessarily eliminate those conditions. In this sense, the Newcomer App functions primarily as a navigational interface within Canada’s complex migration system, helping migrants interpret dispersed information rather than addressing the institutional fragmentation that produces it.

The Newcomer App was founded by an internationally trained migrant academic, reflecting how migrants themselves often identify gaps in support systems and develop digital responses. Although the platform is not explicitly gender-targeted, it emerges within a migration and labour-market context in which migrant women remain among the most structurally marginalised newcomers in Canada (Ferrer & Dhatt, 2023; Guo, 2015; Jeziorek, 2024a; Momani et al., 2022). Research consistently shows that racialised immigrant women face barriers related to credential recognition, labour-market segmentation, caregiving responsibilities and digital access inequalities. From a feminist political economy perspective, digital initiatives developed within migrant support ecosystems therefore emerge within gendered integration systems, even when the platforms themselves are not organised around gender-specific participation. Given limited public documentation, the Canadian case does not support claims about gendered use of the app; instead, it shows how gendered labour-market and care constraints shape the context in which self-navigation tools are developed and expected to function.

Importantly, the Newcomer App does not directly address the structural conditions that produce migrant precarity in Canada’s tiered migration system. It cannot alter eligibility rules for settlement services, provincial differences in healthcare access or the temporary nature of many migration pathways. Instead, it provides interface-mediated tools that help migrants navigate these conditions. In doing so, the app reflects a broader trend in migration governance towards combining public programmes with community-based and digital coordination tools. While such initiatives can improve access to information and services, they also illustrate how integration increasingly involves self-navigation supported by technological and civil-society infrastructures. The Newcomer App thus represents both a practical response to complexity and an example of how responsibilisation operates within contemporary migration governance.

Discussion: Navigability, Responsibilisation and Platform Dependence

Reconfiguring Responsibilisation and Gendered Precarity

The cases of Martynka and the Newcomer App illustrate how digital humanitarian initiatives can mitigate immediate gaps in migration support while operating within governance systems structured by responsibilisation. Rather than transforming migration governance itself, these platforms function as interface-mediated infrastructures that translate fragmented policies and services into navigable information. In doing so, they reconfigure responsibilisation through digital coordination tools that emphasise self-navigation, adaptability and community-based support. Digital humanitarian tools can therefore make complex migration systems more legible without altering the institutional conditions that produce precarity.

A key insight from the comparative analysis is that digital platforms can simultaneously expand access to information and normalise structural fragmentation in service provision. Martynka and the Newcomer App centralise guidance, referrals and peer connectivity, improving migrants’ ability to navigate bureaucratic systems. Yet these tools operate within governance environments where access to services remains conditional and uneven. Translating support into informational guidance does not resolve fragmentation; it reorganises how migrants encounter it. Digital coordination tools thus function alongside, rather than in place of, political debates about migration policy and state responsibility. They help migrants manage existing governance arrangements even when those arrangements remain structurally unequal.

The gendered dimensions of responsibilisation become particularly visible in platform-mediated support ecosystems. In Martynka, women appear prominently as founders, organisers, volunteers and intended users of the platform’s support infrastructure, reflecting how migrant women often sustain community-based support networks during displacement (Kofman & Raghuram, 2015). Activities such as moderating online groups, translating administrative information and coordinating assistance extend unpaid caregiving labour into digital spaces (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014; Terranova, 2000). These forms of digital mutual aid demonstrate resilience and solidarity, but they also illustrate how integration-related labour can become feminised within platform ecosystems.

The Canadian case presents a related but distinct dynamic. The Newcomer App is migrant-founded but not gender-targeted. Rather than demonstrating feminised participation within the platform itself, the case highlights how gendered labour-market inequalities and caregiving responsibilities shape the broader conditions in which self-navigation tools are developed and used. Migrant women’s disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care work and their concentration in precarious labour markets can limit the time, flexibility and resources available to engage with digital integration tools. In this sense, gendered responsibilisation operates not only through who provides support within platforms but also through who can most easily benefit from platform-mediated guidance. As more empirical material becomes available, future work could examine and compare women’s and men’s use of the app in greater detail.

From a governance perspective, the expansion of digital humanitarian initiatives reflects broader shifts towards platform-mediated coordination in migration support systems. Governments, civil society organisations and migrant-led initiatives increasingly rely on digital tools to share information, coordinate services and connect users to resources. These developments do not replace public institutions, but they can redistribute the responsibility for navigating integration systems towards migrants, communities and technological intermediaries. Civil society-led platforms such as Martynka depend on project-based funding, while technology-driven initiatives like the Newcomer App require continuous maintenance, updates and outreach. Without stable funding and institutional integration, digital coordination tools risk becoming temporary solutions to permanent governance gaps.

Digital humanitarianism should therefore be understood as both a response to and a product of contemporary migration governance. The cases examined here show how digital platforms can improve coordination and access to information while simultaneously reflecting broader patterns of conditional inclusion and responsibilisation. Recognising this dual role is essential for developing migration policies that combine technological innovation with sustained institutional support. Digital tools are most effective when they complement, rather than substitute for, rights-based migration governance.

Platform Dependence, Data Governance and Limits to Consent

In addition to questions of access and equity, digital humanitarian platforms raise important issues related to data governance, privacy and accountability (e.g., Jeziorek & Tusikov, 2026). Even when designed to support migrants, digital tools operate within technological infrastructures that involve the collection, storage and circulation of sensitive information. Migrants using online platforms may share personal details such as location, legal status, employment history or family circumstances in order to access assistance or participate in community networks (Sanlier Yüksel, 2022). These practices create ethical responsibilities for platform developers and humanitarian organisations, particularly in contexts where migrants may have limited power to refuse data collection.

Within the cases examined here, Martynka and the Newcomer App function primarily as informational and coordination tools rather than surveillance technologies. However, their reliance on third-party digital infrastructures highlights broader governance questions about how migrant data are handled across humanitarian and migration-technology ecosystems. Martynka’s use of social media platforms means that user interactions may be subject to external data policies and platform governance rules. Similarly, AI-enabled features in the Newcomer App raise questions about data storage, algorithmic transparency and long-term stewardship of user information. These concerns reflect wider transformations in migration governance, where digital infrastructures increasingly mediate access to support.

Scholars of digital borders and migration technologies have documented how data collection and algorithmic systems are becoming embedded in migration administration, even when technologies are framed as supportive rather than controlling (Belaïd, 2022; Frowd et al., 2023). The growing integration of mobile applications, digital identity systems and case-management platforms into migration governance illustrates how humanitarian and administrative technologies can overlap. Even in jurisdictions with strong legal frameworks such as GDPR, questions remain about meaningful consent, transparency and accountability in practice (Gottardo et al., 2024; Nalbandian, 2022).

These dynamics intersect with responsibilisation in subtle ways. As migrants rely more heavily on digital tools to access services and information, they may also assume responsibility for managing their own digital privacy and security risks. Decisions about which platforms to trust, what information to share and how to protect personal data become part of the broader work of navigating migration systems. In this sense, digital humanitarianism extends responsibilisation into the domain of digital governance.

The cases of Martynka and the Newcomer App illustrate how digital humanitarian initiatives operate within this evolving technological environment. While neither platform is designed for monitoring or enforcement, both depend on digital infrastructures that require careful data stewardship and user trust. Attention to privacy protection, transparent data practices and community-centred design is therefore essential for maintaining the supportive role of digital humanitarian platforms. These ethical considerations reinforce the article’s broader argument: digital humanitarianism is not separate from migration governance, but part of an ongoing transformation in how support, technology and responsibility intersect.

Conclusion

Digital humanitarian initiatives have emerged as practical responses to coordination gaps within contemporary migration governance. The cases of Martynka in Poland and the Newcomer App in Canada illustrate how civil-society digital platforms within migrant support ecosystems can improve access to information, services and community support for displaced and temporary migrants navigating complex administrative systems. These platforms demonstrate the importance of technological and community innovation in contexts where migrants must interpret fragmented policy environments and uneven service provision.

At the same time, this article has shown that digital humanitarianism operates within, rather than outside of, existing governance structures. Drawing on the feminist political economy and digital humanitarianism scholarship and a document-based analysis of platform materials and governance contexts, the article conceptualises platforms such as Martynka and the Newcomer App as interface-mediated governance infrastructures that translate fragmented migration systems into navigable information. By facilitating self-navigation through migration regimes, digital humanitarian tools can make precarious conditions more manageable without altering the institutional arrangements that produce them. In this sense, digital humanitarianism both responds to governance gaps and reproduces responsibilisation in a platform-mediated form.

The comparative analysis highlights how these dynamics unfold differently across contexts. In Poland, Martynka illustrates how migrant-led digital humanitarian initiatives can develop into women-centred support ecosystems in which integration-related labour becomes visibly feminised. In Canada, the Newcomer App demonstrates how broadly targeted digital integration tools emerge within migration and labour-market systems where migrant women remain structurally marginalised, even as the platform itself is still being developed and deployed. Together, the cases show that digital humanitarianism does not operate independently of migration governance, but is shaped by the institutional, financial and gendered conditions in which migrant support infrastructures develop.

Recognising digital humanitarianism’s dual role helps move debates beyond technological optimism or technological scepticism. Digital platforms can improve coordination and access to information, but they cannot substitute for stable funding, coherent service provision or rights-based migration policies. Treating digital humanitarian tools primarily as navigational solutions risks framing integration as an informational challenge rather than a question of institutional responsibility.

As migration governance becomes increasingly intertwined with digital infrastructures, future research should examine how migrants use digital humanitarian platforms in practice, how platform developers manage sustainability and data governance challenges and how digital coordination tools can be integrated into migration support systems without reinforcing inequalities. Ensuring that technological innovation complements durable institutional protections will remain a central challenge for migration governance in the digital age.