The Migrant Steps Project

The Migrant Steps Project is conceived as a mobile application, website, and installation that connects daily users of fitness tracking devices to narratives about migration between Central America and the United States. In the course of their daily movements, users of the mobile application will receive haptic feedback that connects their walking, jogging, or other movements to the act of walking in a migrant caravan. By achieving milestones, users gain access to stories and resources that expand and diversify stories about migration currently found in mainstream media. This project intends to intervene in popular narratives about migration, countering media rhetorics of xenophobia and racism, by mobilizing walking as a tool for embodied reflection. It provides users an opportunity to learn more about the conditions of migration, the agency of those migrating, and the community care-work that takes place in this journey while developing creative data literacy by revealing the complexity of data that is messy and refuses easy presentation. Mohammed Rashid is the Humanities Team Lead in the project.