Online speech is increasingly being used as evidence in asylum and immigration decisions. We explore how social media screening policies are evolving and what this means for freedom of expression in the digital age In 2025, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) expanded its social media screening policies to include loosely defined 'anti-American' activity, allowing immigration officers to consider a person’s digital history as a key factor in immigration decisions.
What are the implications of policies like these for migrants, refugees and people seeking protection, and are similar approaches emerging elsewhere?
In this episode, guest speakers from PEN America, a non-profit organisation that champions writers and free speech, reflect on how, as more of what we say and do is recorded and preserved online, new avenues for surveillance and transnational repression are emerging.
With host Rob McNeil, they discuss the history of asylum and free expression, how a person’s digital history might affect their ability to seek protection, and how censorship can follow refugee writers—even long after they flee.
Speakers: Karin Karlekar, Director of Writers at Risk, PEN America, and former journalist Amanda Wells, Alumni of the MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the University of Oxford, and Program Coordinator, Digital Safety & Free Expression, PEN America
Host: Rob McNeil, Deputy Director and Head of Media and Communications at the Migration Observatory
Producer: Kelvin Brown
