An inquiry into the digitisation of border and migration management: performativity, contestation and heterogeneous engineering
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In: Third World Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 1, 02.01.2021, p. 123-140.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - An inquiry into the digitisation of border and migration management
T2 - performativity, contestation and heterogeneous engineering
AU - Glouftsios, Georgios
AU - Scheel, Stephan
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/1/2
Y1 - 2021/1/2
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - biometrics
KW - borders
KW - migration management
KW - mobility control
KW - science and technology studies (STS)
KW - Visa Information System (VIS)
KW - Sociology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090008793&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/01436597.2020.1807929
DO - 10.1080/01436597.2020.1807929
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:85090008793
VL - 42
SP - 123
EP - 140
JO - Third World Quarterly
JF - Third World Quarterly
SN - 0143-6597
IS - 1
ER -