EU: New Handbook offers guide to privacy and data protection for immigration and asylum practitioners
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31 October 2025
Statewatch is publishing a handbook that explains how data protection law can be used to seek remedies and redress for people in the EU’s immigration and asylum systems. Aimed at lawyers, case workers, volunteers and others working on immigration and asylum cases, it offers an overview of key digital technologies, and privacy and data protection concepts and cases.
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From immigration and asylum, to privacy and data protection
The EU’s immigration and asylum system is governed by a dense, complicated web of laws and practices.
That system is increasingly reliant on digital technologies and databases, adding a further layer of complexity.
Personal data gathered, stored and processed through these systems may be crucial in the assessment of an individual’s claim for international protection, for a visa, or to contest deportation.
Understanding these systems and technologies, and the laws that govern them, is therefore increasingly important for immigration and asylum practitioners.
Fundamental to any such understanding is knowledge of privacy and data protection rights, and the policies, legislation, practice and jurisprudence that shape them.
As one of our workshop attendees put it: “Turns out, data protection isn’t just paperwork and fine print – it actually shape how migration and asylum systems work on the ground.”
A new Handbook, published today by Statewatch, provides the foundation of that understanding.
Data Protection Handbook on Asylum and Migration in Europe
The Handbook (pdf) has three sections:
Section 1 provides the context for the growing deployment of digital technologies as part of EU immigration and policy
Borders and the people who cross them are often treated as testing grounds for new technologies, the development of which is increasingly outsourced to private companies.
The Handbook provides illustrative cases studies and an overview of key technologies and systems used at both EU and national level.
Section 2 gives in-depth but accessible explanations of key privacy and data protection principles, terms and concepts.
It provides an overview of the six data protection principles and relevant EU data protection legislation.
It also explains how courts have interpreted questions related to privacy and data protection, including in the context of immigration and asylum cases.
Section 3 examines how data protection law can be used to seek redress for individuals.
It explains the different components of the right to redress in the context of data protection law.
This consists of an individual’s right to access their own personal data, and to have it rectified or deleted if needs be.
The Handbook goes on to explain how to exercise the right of access, and the different bodies from whom redress can be sought.
Data protection law: of growing importance
Infringements of privacy and data protection rights can underpin other rights violations against people in the immigration and asylum systems.
Deportations may take place based on mistaken identity. People can be refused visas due to algorithmic assessment, The police may continually harass someone who has been mislabelled a danger to national security.
The avenues for redress offered by data protection law can offer ways to help seek justice in these and many other situations.
As increasing amounts of personal data are gathered from people crossing borders, understanding data protection law and its uses will only become more important.
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Further reading
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EU prepares to give US direct access to police and immigration databases
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