arxiv: 2604.05386 · v1 · submitted 2026-04-07 · 💻 cs.HC · cs.CY

Recognition: 2 theorem links

· Lean Theorem

Transient Non-Use: How People in Migration Experience Digital Disconnection

Anamika Rajendran, Augusto Penzo Jara, Jonathan Leuenberger, Shiva Darian, Tajwar-Ul Hoque

Authors on Pith no claims yet

Pith reviewed 2026-05-10 19:38 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.HC cs.CY

keywords ICT non-usedigital disconnectionmigrationtechnology transitionsprotective strategiessystemic exclusionHCI designborder experiences

0 comments

The pith

People in migration avoid digital technologies in shifting ways that serve protection and respond to exclusion across three transition phases.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper investigates how migrants intentionally and unintentionally avoid ICTs like devices and information during border transitions. Interviews with 32 people in El Paso reveal non-use practices tied to time, risk, and institutional demands. These practices are framed in three phases: understanding the situation, negotiating with systems, and resolving outcomes. If accurate, this view treats non-use as a normal part of migration rather than a design flaw to fix. It implies that technology systems should support disconnection without assuming constant use.

Core claim

ICT non-use during migration is transient and context-dependent, operating both as a protective strategy against risks and as an outcome of systemic exclusion by institutions and technologies. The analysis maps these experiences onto three phases of transition—understanding, negotiating, and resolving—showing how avoidance changes with external pressures rather than remaining fixed.

What carries the argument

The three-phase transition framework of understanding, negotiating, and resolving, which extends the concept of non-use by linking it to migration timelines and demands.

If this is right

Non-use shifts according to time, risk levels, and institutional requirements during migration.
Non-use serves simultaneously as a protective strategy and a reaction to systemic exclusion.
Design should treat non-use as both intentional and unintentional conditions instead of a failure to correct.
Systems can anticipate non-use without penalizing users for disconnection.
Technology for migrants must account for phases where avoidance is expected rather than assuming continuous adoption.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

The three-phase model could help analyze digital disconnection in other groups facing temporary instability, such as displaced workers or asylum seekers in new locations.
Designers might add features allowing easy reconnection after protective non-use periods without data loss or penalties.
Policy efforts could target institutional rules that force non-use, reducing exclusion by making systems more accessible during transitions.
Longer-term studies tracking the same individuals across multiple borders could test whether the phases repeat or evolve differently.

Load-bearing premise

That patterns observed in 32 interviews from one border city represent typical ICT non-use across varied migration settings.

What would settle it

Finding that non-use experiences in another migration context, such as a different border region or country, follow fixed patterns unrelated to the three phases of understanding, negotiating, and resolving.

read the original abstract

People experiencing migration endure many transitions across borders, technologies, and social systems. While HCI research often emphasizes this community's adoption of technology, less attention has been paid to practices of technological non-use. This paper investigates how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are intentionally and unintentionally avoided, withheld, or not used during migration. Drawing on interviews with 32 people experiencing migration in the border city of El Paso, Texas, USA between February and May 2025, we identify a range of non-use experiences, including device, informational, and protective non-use. We extend the concept of non-use by situating it within the three phases of transitions: understanding, negotiating, and resolving. We show how ICT non-use shifts with time, risk, and institutional demands. Our analysis demonstrates that non-use functions both as a protective strategy and as a response to systemic exclusion, and concludes with design principles that anticipate non-use as both intentional and unintentional design conditions rather than as punitive failure.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Desk Editor's Note private letter to a colleague

The paper maps ICT non-use across migration phases from El Paso interviews but the single site raises questions about broader application.

read the letter

The main takeaway is that this work shows non-use of phones and info during migration is not just a glitch but shifts with risk and time, acting sometimes as protection and sometimes as forced exclusion. They interviewed 32 people in El Paso and grouped experiences into understanding, negotiating, and resolving phases, plus categories like device non-use and protective non-use. That framing moves the conversation in HCI away from pure adoption stories toward designing for disconnection as a normal state.

Referee Report

2 major / 1 minor

Summary. The paper examines ICT non-use among people experiencing migration, drawing on 32 interviews conducted in El Paso, Texas, between February and May 2025. It identifies forms of non-use (device, informational, and protective) and situates them within a three-phase transition framework of understanding, negotiating, and resolving. The work argues that non-use shifts with time, risk, and institutional demands, functions simultaneously as a protective strategy and response to systemic exclusion, and derives design principles that treat non-use as an anticipated condition rather than a failure to be corrected.

Significance. If the empirical claims are adequately supported, the paper makes a useful contribution to HCI by extending non-use scholarship into transient migration settings, where disconnection is shaped by both agency and structural constraints. The dual framing of non-use (protective and exclusionary) and the resulting design principles offer concrete guidance for systems that must accommodate intermittent or absent connectivity. The interview-based approach surfaces mechanisms that quantitative adoption studies often overlook.

major comments (2)

[Methods / Data Analysis] The manuscript provides no description of the qualitative analysis methods, coding procedures, or how the three-phase framework (understanding, negotiating, resolving) was inductively or deductively derived from the interview transcripts. Without this information, the central claims about temporal shifts, risk dynamics, and dual functions of non-use cannot be evaluated for rigor or traceability to the data.
[Findings / Discussion] The three-phase transition model and associated design principles are positioned as broadly applicable to migration contexts, yet they rest on a single-site sample of 32 interviews in one U.S.-Mexico border city. The paper should explicitly address whether and how the observed patterns generalize beyond El Paso’s specific policy environment, device availability, and institutional actors, or qualify the scope of the design implications accordingly.

minor comments (1)

[Abstract] The abstract states the interview period as February–May 2025; confirm whether this is a typographical error for 2024 or an intentional future reference, and ensure consistency with the full methods description.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their constructive and detailed feedback, which helps us clarify the methodological foundations and scope of our work. We address each major comment below.

read point-by-point responses

Referee: [Methods / Data Analysis] The manuscript provides no description of the qualitative analysis methods, coding procedures, or how the three-phase framework (understanding, negotiating, resolving) was inductively or deductively derived from the interview transcripts. Without this information, the central claims about temporal shifts, risk dynamics, and dual functions of non-use cannot be evaluated for rigor or traceability to the data.

Authors: We agree that the absence of a detailed account of our qualitative analysis methods limits the ability to assess the traceability of our claims. In the revised manuscript, we will add a new subsection under Methods that explicitly describes our inductive thematic analysis process. This will include the steps for open coding of the 32 interview transcripts, the development of axial codes around non-use types and transition phases, the iterative refinement of themes through team discussions, and the specific analytic path by which the three-phase framework (understanding, negotiating, resolving) emerged from patterns in the data. We will also provide illustrative examples of how participant quotes were mapped to phases and to the dual protective/exclusionary functions of non-use. revision: yes
Referee: [Findings / Discussion] The three-phase transition model and associated design principles are positioned as broadly applicable to migration contexts, yet they rest on a single-site sample of 32 interviews in one U.S.-Mexico border city. The paper should explicitly address whether and how the observed patterns generalize beyond El Paso’s specific policy environment, device availability, and institutional actors, or qualify the scope of the design implications accordingly.

Authors: We acknowledge that the study is grounded in a single border-city context and that El Paso’s particular policy environment, institutional actors, and device-access conditions shape the observed non-use practices. In the revised manuscript, we will expand the Discussion and add a dedicated Limitations subsection to qualify the scope of our claims. We will state that the three-phase model and design principles are offered as transferable insights derived from this transient migration setting rather than as universally generalizable findings, and we will discuss how patterns may differ in other regions with distinct legal, technological, or support infrastructures. We will also outline directions for future multi-site research to examine the framework’s applicability elsewhere. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity; qualitative framework derived from external interview data

full rationale

The paper is a descriptive qualitative study drawing on 32 interviews conducted in El Paso. It identifies non-use practices and situates them in a three-phase transition framework (understanding, negotiating, resolving) extracted from the interview transcripts. No equations, fitted parameters, predictions, or self-citations are present that would reduce any claim to its own inputs by construction. The derivation chain consists of thematic analysis of external primary data, which is independent of the reported findings and does not exhibit self-definition, smuggling of ansatzes, or load-bearing self-citation. This is the expected non-circular outcome for empirical HCI work of this type.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The central claim rests on interpretive analysis of localized qualitative interviews without specified validation steps or external benchmarks; the three-phase transition model is applied without independent justification in the abstract.

axioms (1)

domain assumption The 32 interviews in El Paso capture representative non-use experiences during migration transitions.
The study is limited to one location and time period (Feb-May 2025) with no mention of broader validation.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5484 in / 1308 out tokens · 49198 ms · 2026-05-10T19:38:17.319961+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Lean theorems connected to this paper

Citations machine-checked in the Pith Canon. Every link opens the source theorem in the public Lean library.

IndisputableMonolith/Foundation/RealityFromDistinction.lean reality_from_one_distinction unclear
We extend the concept of non-use by situating it within the three phases of transitions: understanding, negotiating, and resolving.
IndisputableMonolith/Cost/FunctionalEquation.lean washburn_uniqueness_aczel unclear
Satchell and Dourish’s foundational typology of non-use

Reference graph

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