Washington, DC – The Im/migrant Well-Being Scholar Collaborative (“The Collaborative”) proudly announces a new scholar affiliate, Dr. Marianna Poyares. She is a Postdoctoral Associate Lead at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law with interests in tech policy, data ethics, critical migration studies, human rights, and social and democratic theory.
Dr. Poyares researches new technologies of border and migration governance. Working at the intersection of tech policy, human rights, and migration, she has published on topics such as the use of chatbots by humanitarian organizations; biometrics in the context of immigration enforcement; democracy and belonging; solidarity movements; electronic monitoring of non-citizens; political philosophy; and ethnographic research. Dr. Poyares has previously worked with the Brazilian National Truth Commission, the United Nations Development Program, the International Rescue Committee, and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. She has taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, The New School, and CUNY.
In collaboration with The Center on Privacy and Technology at the Georgetown University Law and The Collaborative, Dr. Poyares wrote a one-pager on the concept of “migrant data extractivism” based on her August 2025 article published in the International Migration Journal. As Dr. Poyares writes in the one-pager explaining the concept and its important implications for human rights, “migrant data extractivism goes beyond mere user data collection, and sediments an ongoing shift within migration governance from a system of rights, based on human dignity, to a system of sustained racialized dispossession, appropriation, and control. This shift raises critical questions as to the limits of human rights in the datafied world.”
Dr. Poyares looks forward to joining the Collaborative, stating, “I’m excited to join this community of publicly engaged scholars united by the understanding that the well-being of immigrants is inseparable from the well-being of society as a whole, and I look forward to contributing my own work and perspective to that shared mission.”
The Im/migrant Well-Being Scholar Collaborative is delighted to welcome Dr. Poyares to our community of scholar affiliates who conduct multidisciplinary, empirical research on immigration. The Collaborative bridges the gap between research and policy by promoting work and translating findings on im/migrant well-being for use by policymakers and community organizations.