MMN & RSC & QMUL Workshop: ‘Digital technologies and migration regimes’

The University of Oxford’s Migration and Mobility Network (MMN), the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) and the Centre for the Study of Migration (QMUL) invite academics, including early career researchers, to present original research during a one-day closed workshop entitled ‘Digital technologies and migration regimes’, which will take place online on the 24th May at the Refugee Studies Centre (University of Oxford). 

All participants will be expected to submit draft papers, read and comment on the draft papers of others. The aim of the workshop is to have an in-depth discussion with a view to exchange ideas and give constructive feedback for each paper. Following the workshop, selected papers will be considered for a special issue proposal, which will examine the interlinkages between digital technologies and migration regimes.  

Workshop themes and objectives  

This workshop will examine how digital technologies are shaping migration regimes across the world. We will explore how digital technologies maintain and reproduce hostile border and migration governance as well as being used by migrants and non-migrants to navigate or to contest them. These technologies include identification and surveillance techniques such as smart border technologies, including, but not limited to, biometric identification technologies, drones and motion sensors, as well as automated decision making systems impacting mobility in general. These technologies have grown exponentially over the last decade with projects developed in humanitarian settings with asylum seekers and refugees, or migrants who wish to travel and may have limited power to contest them. 

The pandemic has further accelerated the drive for technological solutions in all domains of life but it has also been used as a pretext to consolidate the building of a ‘Digital Fortress’ to prevent refugees and migrants from reaching Europe’s external borders. These technologies have critical implications for human rights, data protection and privacy, and bring about new questions about ethics and governance of migration. ‘Digital borders’, as argued by Chouliaraki and Georgiou (2019), function as ‘a techno-symbolic assemblage of mediations that produce and reproduce hierarchical arrangements of inside/outside’. These assemblages are situated forming different configurations of ‘empowerment and control nexus’ (Nedelcu and Soysüren 2020) that bring to light the different mediating roles of digital technologies as used by different actors (such as migrants, activists, humanitarian actors, border guards) at the borders, but also within and beyond them. If digital technologies are rapidly expanding into all areas of migration and border governance, they are also being used by migrants and advocates to respond to these regimes.  

Migrants in particular are often overlooked in these discussions, though they are directly impacted by digital technologies and also creatively use them to push back against bordering practices. Civil society organisations, as well as municipalities, are also engaging in daily digital acts of resistance. For example, recently, we have seen the resurgence of ‘digital sanctuary cities’, with repeated calls for ‘firewalls’ (Jolly and Lind 2021) and non-cooperation to ensure that precarious status migrants can access services (such as provision of vaccines) without fear of being captured by inland border enforcement. Yet it is important to recognize that such strategies are enacted in power-laden structural contexts, where choices to access support and exercise rights are heavily constrained.  

In this framework, the workshop will address topics related to digital technologies and migration, including, but not limited to, the following questions: 

1. What is the impact of digital technologies on mobility and migration? (For instance, rising digital technologies adopted by European states may change migration routes or may provoke migrants to use other ways to move around.) 
2. In which ways are migration and Covid-tech intersecting with one another? With what effects?      
3. To what extent do states in the Global North encourage, facilitate or condition states in the Global South to adopt these technologies in order to govern migration? 
4. How do migrants perceive the use of digital technologies?  
5. How do migrants use digital technologies to navigate bordering mechanisms?  
6. What forms of digital resistance to borders are emerging? To what extent do civil society members use digital technologies to contest hostile border regimes?
7.  What makes a “digital sanctuary city”?  

Comparative perspectives are welcome. 

Submission guidelines 

Please provide a title, 300 – 500 word abstract and a 100 word speaker bio and email it to r.humphris@qmul.ac.uk and marie.godin@qeh.ox.ac.uk by the 25th of February 2022. Please make sure the abstract includes the theoretical and methodological framework. Decisions will be sent by 3rd March 2022, via email.