An inquiry into the digitisation of border and migration management: performativity, contestation and heterogeneous engineering

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

This article is concerned with the digitisation of border security and migration management. Illustrated through an encounter between a migrant and the Visa Information System (VIS)–one of the largest migration-related biometric databases worldwide–the article’s first part outlines three implications of digitisation. We argue that the VIS assembles a set of previously unconnected state authorities into a group of end users who enact border security and migration management through the gathering, processing and sharing of data; facilitates the practice of traceability, understood as a rationality of mobility control; and has restrictive effects on migrants’ capacity to manoeuvre and resist control. Given these implications, the article’s second part introduces three analytical sensitivities that help to avoid some analytical traps when studying digitisation processes. These sensitivities take their cue from insights and concepts in science and technology studies (STS), specifically material semiotics/ANT approaches. They concern, firstly, the ways that data-based security practices perform the identities of the individuals that they target; secondly, the need to consider possible practices of subversion by migrants to avoid control-biased analyses; and finally, the challenge to study the design and development of border security technologies without falling into either technological or socio-political determinism.

Original languageEnglish
JournalThird World Quarterly
Volume42
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)123-140
Number of pages18
ISSN0143-6597
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 02.01.2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

    Research areas

  • biometrics, borders, migration management, mobility control, science and technology studies (STS), Visa Information System (VIS)
  • Sociology

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Foundations for the Development of Simulator-based Training for Older Professional Drivers
  2. Commitment Strategies for Sustainability
  3. Can isometric testing substitute for the one repetition maximum squat test?
  4. Efficacy of a Self-Help Web-Based Recovery Training in Improving Sleep in Workers
  5. Predicting recurrent chat contact in a psychological intervention for the youth using natural language processing
  6. I Am Not A Hacker
  7. Insights into Jatropha Projects Worldwide
  8. Fluid-structure interaction modelling of a soft pneumatic actuator
  9. Modeling and predicting aquatic aerobic biodegradation
  10. Tracing Concepts
  11. Formative assessment in mathematics
  12. Sustainability-oriented technology exploration: managerial values, ambidextrous design, and separation drift
  13. Scientific and local ecological knowledge, shaping perceptions towards protected areas and related ecosystem services
  14. Effect of Planning for Connectivity on Linear Reserve Networks
  15. The 'need for speed'
  16. Computer Support for Environmental Management Accounting
  17. Variational pragmatics
  18. The use of player physical and technical skill match activity profiles to predict position in the Australian Football League draft
  19. Exploring the Use of the Pronoun I in German Academic Texts with Machine Learning
  20. Qualitätssicherung und Entwicklung in der Elementarpädagogik
  21. Information Extraction from Invoices
  22. Integrating indigenous and local knowledge in management and research on coastal ecosystems in the Global South
  23. The bidirectional relationship between ESG performance and earnings management
  24. Probing turbulent superstructures in Rayleigh-Bénard convection by Lagrangian trajectory clusters
  25. Anticipated imitation of multiple agents
  26. Robust Adaptive Soft Landing Control of an Electromagnetic Valve Actuator for Camless Engines
  27. A black box identification in frequency domain
  28. Learning to collaborate while collaborating

Press / Media

  1. Computersimulation