This Writing-for-publication workshop is organized by the STS-MigTec network, with support from the RISK CHANGE research project (2021-2022), which is hosted by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). The workshop aims at facilitating encounters between Critical Border & Migration Studies and the study of Technology from the perspectives of the humanities and the social sciences (especially Science and Technology Studies and related fields such as History of Technology).

We invited applications on technologies and infrastructures of migration and border regimes, among other things concerning:

● technopolitics, promises and imaginaries of big data, algorithms, and AI innovation and regulation
● data practices, politics of expertise and the (un)making of knowledge
● digitized and algorithmic forms of (counter)surveillance
● racial and (post)colonial legacies
● controversies and issues on data justice and accountability
● socio-technical cultures of the mobile commons (autonomy of migration)
● (the lack of) social service provision and citizenship
● forms of and tensions in counter trafficking interventions
● biopolitical modes of bordering and how they affect migrant subjects

This Writing-for-publication workshop is organized by the STS-MigTec network, with support from the RISK CHANGE research project (2021-2022), which is hosted by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). The workshop aims at facilitating encounters between Critical Border & Migration Studies and the study of Technology from the perspectives of the humanities and the social sciences (especially Science and Technology Studies and related fields such as History of Technology). The workshop aimed at getting paper drafts ready for publication, and therefore invites interested participants who have work-in-progress writing projects to join to advance their work for final publication.

Workshop Discussants

Nina Amelung, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Olga Lafazani, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Silvan Pollozek, European University Viadrina, Germany

Keynote presentations

Keynote1 (online)

19.05.2022, 17:00 – 18:15 (CET)
Niovi Vavoula (Queen Mary University of London)
“The Changing Landscape of the Surveillance of Movement in the EU: A Fivefold Paradigm Shift”
Moderation: Emellin Oliveira (NOVA School of Law)

Abstract: This keynote speech aims to map new trends in the operationalisation of surveillance of movement in the EU/Schengen area, by providing insights in connection to both information systems for third-country nationals and their forthcoming interoperability, as well as the reforms in the API/PNR framework. In that regard, it will focus on five major paradigm shift in survelling foreigners and travelers more broadly through the extensive processing of their personal data: 1. Generalisation of surveillance of movement; 2. Magnification of the categories of personal data collected, including of biometric identifiers; 3. Expansion of the state authorities and agencies benefiting from surveillance, including the increasing role of EU agencies in this context; 4. Privatisation of surveillance and 5. Solidification of algorithmic profiling. In identifying these trends, the presentation will highlight key fundamental rights concerns and provide certain recommendations for legislative reform.

Bio: Dr Vavoula is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Migration and Security at Queen Mary University of London (School of Law). She was previously Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in at the same university and part-time teacher at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).  She publishes in the fields of EU immigration law, particularly on the digitalisation of immigration control, EU criminal law, including on the exchange of personal data for law enforcement purposes, and more broadly on privacy law.

Keynote2 (online)

20.05.2022, 16:15 – 18:00 (CET)
Rocco Bellanova (University of Amsterdam)
“Violence and Datafication” 
Moderation: Lisa Borelli (HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Institute of Social Work)

Abstract : In a world in which data are crucial to multiple forms of governance, algorithms and violence are closely intertwined. Research across law and international politics has already insisted on the need to better understand how algorithmic systems redefine security practice. Notably, a growing and interdisciplinary literature discusses how data-driven technologies such as semi-autonomous weapons or profiling are used to exert new and old forms of violence, from kinetic strikes to discriminatory controls to the marginalization of already fragilized communities or individuals.

Other works insist on the importance of detecting and unpacking the various bias inscribed into algorithmic systems, so to put into perspective the supposed objectivity that would justify violent actions exerted in the name of computation. Altogether, these strands of research help us foregrounding the question of violence in any discussion about security and border technologies. However, we risk overlooking how algorithmic rule relies, in fact, on and specific datafication processes and data infrastructures. Prolonging a conversation about the possibility to critique algorithmic violence (Bellanova et al. 2021), I want to insist on the importance to keep exploring the government of data, and this as a socio-material site in which the digital, violence, and legitimacy are configurated. I want to argue that research on algorithmic security can benefit from broadening our research focus to what we can call the foundations upon which algorithmic violence is expected, or actually come, to operate.

Bringing Critical Data Studies into conversation with critical approaches to border and security studies, this means to explore how data infrastructures become sites (and not only tools) of security practice. As Derrida (1990: 931 & 925) would say, this does not mean to embrace a “foundationalist” approach to datafication, but rather explore how data infrastructuring contributes to define the “enforceability” of algorithmic security – and thus the relation between violence and the data governance that is supposed to tame it or exert it.

Bio: Rocco Bellanova is Assistant Professor of Critical Data Studies in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and Visiting Professor at the Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles. Rocco’s work sits at the intersection of politics, law and science & technology studies (STS), and focuses on digital data as pivotal elements in the governing of societies. He carries out research on security technologies and their infrastructural politics, as well as on the European governance of machine learning algorithms and data exchanges in the domain of justice and home affairs.

Program

The workshop consisted of a programme covering three days with sessions on paper drafts presented by participants in the morning, followed by afternoon lectures by prominent scholars in the field of STS, history of technology and border & migration studies. Participants will get feedback from experts in the field about their research contributions. Discussants will cover topics dedicated to themes around how to advance papers in the thematic areas of the workshop towards publication. Post-workshop versions of the participant papers will be published in a bilingual online and open access volume (English, with a translation into Greek, arranged by the organizers).

Organizing Team

Aristotle Tympas, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Lisa Marie Borrelli, HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Institute of Social Work, Switzerland
Olga Usachova, University of Padova, Italy
Mara Clemente, ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal
Emellin de Oliveira, NOVA School of Law, Portugal