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

目前，移民管制领域的技术大量增加，其中许多技术的目的是追踪、识别、拘留和驱逐非法移民。《欧洲人工智能法案》（European Artificial Intelligence Act）、生物识别移民数据库的扩展、在与土耳其接壤的陆地边境或英吉利海峡对岸使用无人机，以及在希腊建立高科技难民营等政策的发展，都表明了技术在证券化和敌对移民政策中日益重要。与此同时，“无缝”机场也在发展中，在那里，安检门将不复存在，因为技术可以跟踪和识别通过机场的旅客。这通常被认为是“理想”旅客的巨大进步，因为他们的责任是减少在机场的等待时间。但是，对于那些行动权利受到限制的人、那些非法移民和被排除在外的人、那些来自前殖民地或逃离迫害的人、那些被剥夺行动自由并时时受到审查的人，这将产生什么影响呢？该奖学金将解决这些重要而复杂的问题，探索数字边界的不同体验。在这里，技术包括广泛的数据基础设施，包括移民数据库、电话或现金卡等日常技术，以及日益复杂的物理边界监控技术。作为ERC资助的DATAJUSTICE项目的一部分，我在2018年10月至2021年1月期间在希腊和英国为我的博士学位进行了人种学田野调查。我与移民团结团体合作，对72名对话者进行了参与者观察和访谈，其中包括流离失所者、民间社会行动者、志愿者和活动人士、非政府组织工作人员、律师、边防警卫和庇护工作人员。我将数据化的边界作为争论、斗争和治理的持续场所。考虑到用于移民控制的技术日益具有争议的性质，该奖学金将使我能够回到英国和希腊，了解该领域内快速变化的变化。在我博士研究的基础上，我将专注于发展如何影响当今欧洲流离失所者面临的生活现实和暴力。为了使自己成为关键边界研究领域的领先学者，我将创造研究成果，包括期刊文章，书籍提案，博客，研讨会系列和未来的资助提案。该奖学金的两个核心目标是使边界制度内使用的技术去殖民化和去神秘化。为此，我将创建可访问的资源，以接触学术界以外的受众，并影响民间社会团体、运动和政策。我将组织一个合作系列研讨会，汇集受影响的社区、活动家、民间社会团体和从事跨（数据化）边界权利问题的学者，共同设想可以采取哪些步骤使边界技术非殖民化。这些想法将产生一系列的博客条目，使用视觉设计和文本，最终形成一个广泛访问的杂志。这样做的目的是揭开复杂边界技术的神秘面纱，这些技术通常被描述为一个黑盒子，迄今为止，它限制了社区参与的深度和对其发展的更广泛的公众监督。我将提出的筹资建议将以这些活动为基础，并利用有限后续研究的结果，探讨过去和目前使用的数据化身份、监测和遏制手段如何影响非法移徙者的日常经历，包括他们获得庇护、保健和社会照顾以及其他基本权利的机会。它将这样做是为了突出这些发展的历史，以及想象非殖民化的未来，在那里，边境技术可以帮助人们安全移动，而不是将他们推向更危险的路线，作为一种不被发现的过境手段。

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.