The Digital Leisure Divide and the Forcibly Displaced (Field Research)

When actively pursuing connectivity and digital inclusion solutions for forcibly displaced persons, UNHCR has often found that leisure and entertainment are some of the most prominent connectivity use cases. However, very few assessments have dug into these dimensions of connectivity – tending to focus, instead, on more utilitarian use cases. Our new research on the Digital Leisure Divide and the Forcibly Displaced, produced in partnership with the Erasmus University Rotterdam, seeks to address this gap. It examines how digital technologies are being used by forcibly displaced people for leisure purposes, covering aspects such as entertainment, gaming, sexuality, content creation, community voice, and livelihoods, among others.  The initial Digital Leisure Divide report presents desk research focusing on the various uses and potential benefits of digital leisure in displacement contexts. These findings are complemented and validated in the second report, which brings together learnings gathered during field research in Boa Vista, Brazil, and showcases the voices of community members, who expressed their preferences and uses of digital technologies for leisure purposes.