Online with Alizée Dauchy, Post-doctoral Researcher in International Studies, University of Trento.

4th March 2024, 15:00-16:30 CET

In the context of the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, Niger has been actively committed to migration control in West Africa. To enable better comprehension of the making of security in Niger, the article “Dreaming Biometrics” studies the implementation of three biometric system (Wapis, Midas and Bims) under the EU Trust Fund by international agencies (Interpol, the International Organization for Migration, and the UNHCR) and national actors. Drawing on in-depth interviews, observation at the border and anthropology of aid studies, I focus on heterogeneous actors’ situated discourses and practices to demonstrate that they do not share the same dream about biometrics.

The article, as a first attempt to fill the “empirical gap between discourse of biometric capability and operational realities” (Singler 2021), outlines the need to move away from the rhetoric of regional and international organisations, states and private actors on digital innovation and to look at how technology is (not) implemented at the border. Studying the materialities of the borderscape means to focus on interaction more than properties as a methodological starting point for the research (Fischer 2018). By doing so, this presentation outlines the importance of the social and geographical contexts in which security devices are deployed and how it shapes or constrains the deployment of these systems and invites to escape also from a certain techno-hype or techno determinism in the Global South.

17 November 2023, 3-4:30 pm (CET)

“The Walls Have Eyes: Techno-Racism and Politics of Exclusion at the Border”

Technological experiments play up an ‘Us’ vs ‘Them’ mentality at the centre of migration management policy. Border spaces serve as testing grounds for new technologies, places where regulation is deliberately limited and where an ‘anything goes’ frontier attitude informs the development and deployment of surveillance at the expense of people’s lives. Unbridled techno-solutionism and migration surveillance exacerbates deterrence mechanisms already so deeply embedded in the global migration management strategy, like at the Polish Belarusian border, making things as difficult for people to set an example and to prevent others from coming. This paper is based on ethnographic on-the-ground research at various borders, drawing on vignettes from Poland/Belarus, the Aegean Islands of Greece, and the US-Mexico border. Coupled with a human rights-based approach to analysing the far-reaching human impacts of surveillance and automation at the border, it argues that an increasingly global and lucrative panopticon of migration control exacerbates discrimination and obfuscates responsibility and liability through the development and deployment of increasingly hardline border technologies, once again reifying the vast power differentials between those who move and those who make decisions about how to ‘manage’ migration.

11 December 2023, 3-4:30 pm (CET)

“Dispossession Through (Dys)functional Data Infrastructure; Technology as a Tool of Immigration Policy”

Drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork in the UK and Greece, Philippa conceptualises (dys)functional data infrastructures as a tool through which opaque policy outcomes are achieved; used to dispossess illegalised migrants of basic rights after they have crossed the external borders of Europe, whilst also becoming a means of legitimising ongoing investment in technological systems which serve to benefit private interests. Through doing so, she explores what is at stake when we discuss the harms of datafied borders. She discusses the use of Skype in Greece, which was in operation until 2021 and presented as a practical tool for registering asylum claims, as well as the MESH data infrastructure used in the British healthcare system where personal data are shared between the NHS and the Home Office, presented as a means of enforcing chargeability checks. In both instances, the technological infrastructure seemingly failed to fulfil the stated policy purpose of offering a practical way to apply for asylum or recouping healthcare costs. Instead, in Greece, many found the Skype system became a barrier to accessing asylum, and in the UK, people became wary of accessing healthcare over fears of becoming visible to the Home Office and consequently detained. Whilst borders are themselves a “tool in a global order predicated on colonial and racial forms of (dis)possession” (Brito 2023, 10), through focusing on the exclusionary and colonial logics that underpin asylum and immigration policies in Europe (El-Enany 2020; Squire 2009), Philippa draws on a framework of dispossession to conceptualise how datafication “creates the conditions for a new apparatus of racialised dispossession” (Gray 2023, 3) through (dys)functional technological systems. She argues that the (dys)functionality of these infrastructures is intrinsic to fulfilling harmful policies in a way that distances the state from enacting violence, thus avoiding a level of public scrutiny. Finally, Philippa argues that this simultaneously legitimises further development of these technologies, where the use of datafied controls is never questioned, but rather corporate actors position themselves as experts who can fettle and fine tune (dys)functional technological systems.

Dirty versus clean data: The Politics of Policing Intelligence in South African Policing

Across the globe, everyday policing is increasingly defined by digitalization and technologies. This trend can be identified across the plural policing landscape, whereby public, private, and civic policing actors employ a range of technological tools and measures in their everyday policing practices. In South Africa, technologies in policing are primarily geared towards more effective crime prevention and detection. A core objective for numerous policing actors is the acquisition of more so-called intelligence and this primarily entails collecting various forms and sets of data through a range of technologies, such as Apps and CCTV cameras. The underlying assumption is that more data will allow for more efficient and accountable crime prevention and pro-active policing. In this presentation, I analyze the politics of this intelligence gathering process and a recurrent distinction that is made between ‘dirty’ versus ‘clean’ data. By drawing from qualitative research conducted in 2021-2023, I will discuss the ways ‘data’ is framed and discussed, and how these distinctions of ‘dirt’ versus ‘clean’ mirror and reproduce existing divisions and hierarchies within the plural policing landscape.

to be announced