Datafied borders as opaque immigration policy: Demystifying complex data infrastructures at the border

There is currently a proliferation of technology within the field of immigration control, much of which is designed to track, identify, detain and deport illegalised migrants. Policy developments such as the European Artificial Intelligence Act, the expansion of biometric migration databases, the use of drones at the land border with Turkey or across the English Channel, and the creation of high-tech refugee camps in Greece demonstrate the growing importance of technology within securitised and hostile immigration policy.

At the same time, 'seamless' airports are also under development, where security gates cease to exist as technology tracks and identifies travellers moving through the airport. This is often presented as a vast improvement for 'desirable' travellers, as the onus is on cutting down waiting times at airports. But what is the impact for those whose mobility rights are curtailed, for those who are illegalised and excluded, for those from former colonies or those fleeing persecution, who are denied freedom of movement and subject to scrutiny at every turn?

This fellowship will address these important and complex questions, exploring disparate experiences of digital borders. Here, technologies include expansive data infrastructures including migration databases, everyday technologies such as phones or cash cards, and increasingly sophisticated surveillance technologies at physical borders. As part of the ERC funded DATAJUSTICE project, I undertook ethnographic fieldwork for my PhD in Greece and the UK between Oct 2018 and Jan 2021.

I worked with migrant solidarity groups conducting participant observation and interviews with 72 interlocutors, including displaced people, civil society actors, volunteers and activists, NGO workers, lawyers, border guards and asylum staff. I engaged with datafied borders as ongoing sites of contestation, struggle, and governance. The fellowship will allow me to return to the UK and Greece to understand the fast-moving changes within the field considering the increasingly contested nature of technology used for migration control.

Building on my doctoral research, I will focus on how developments impact the lived realities and violence that displaced people face in Europe today. To establish myself as a leading scholar in the field of critical border studies, I will create research outputs including journal articles, a book proposal, a blog, workshop series and future funding proposals.

The two core aims of the fellowship are to decolonise and demystify technologies used within border regimes. I will do so through the creation of accessible resources to reach audiences beyond academia and impact civil society groups, campaigns, and policy. I will organise a collaborative workshop series that will bring together impacted communities, activists, civil society groups, and academics working on the issue of rights across (datafied) borders to collectively visualise what steps could be taken to decolonise border technologies.

These ideas will generate a series of blog entries, using both visual designs and text, culminating in a widely accessible zine. The aim of this is to demystify complex border technologies, often described as a black box, which has thus far limited the depth of community engagement and wider public scrutiny of their development. The funding proposal I will develop will build upon these activities and use findings from the limited follow up research to explore how the historical and ongoing deployment of datafied means of identification, surveillance, and containment impact the everyday experiences of illegalised migrants, including their access to asylum, health and social care and other fundamental rights.

It will do so to highlight the histories of such developments, as well as imagine decolonial futures, where border technologies may help people to move safely, opposed to pushing them to ever more dangerous routes as a means of crossing borders undetected.