Policing Migration and Borders

Summary

Migration is increasingly becoming digitized. From robodogs surveilling the US/Mexico border to drones flying over the Mediterranean Sea to biometrics being collected in refugee camps, untested and high-risk technologies have made their way into virtually every aspect of human movement. States around the world have developed and deployed these experimental projects without public scrutiny or accountability mechanisms. In mid-2020s, governance and legislative frameworks around border technologies remain inadequate to safeguard people’s human rights. Political discourse around migration control also plays a central part in the normalization of surveillance and artificial intelligence to manage borders. Fears around migration and systematic exclusion of certain communities prevents people on the move from Majority World countries from exercising their freedom of movement and animate the techno-solutionism at the center of the decisions that powerful actors make to police migration and borders. The private sector is also a major player in normalizing surveillance, profiting in a multibillion-dollar border industrial complex built on testing new technologies in places like the Occupied Palestinian Territories and exporting them for border enforcement to places like the US/Mexico border and the fringes of the European Union.

This chapter explores the policing of migration and borders through exclusion and surveillance technologies. It first explores how digital colonialism and border externalization fuel an ecosystem of exclusion, with powerful actors like states and international organizations normalizing the collection of data in Majority World countries. The chapter then explores the growing role of the private sector and the testing of technologies in places like Palestine, only for said technology to be exported for border enforcement to places like the US/Mexico border and the fringes of the European Union. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the need for more governance and accountability mechanisms, as well as resistance and solidarity to an increasingly bordered world.