[Commlist] CFP STS-MIGTEC Paper Workshop 2022 (work at the intersection of media, communication, science and technology studies (STS) and critical migration, security, surveillance, and border studies)

STS-MIGTEC Paper Workshop 2022 ONLINE

15-17 February 2022

Call for Papers

The STS-MIGTEC network aims to stimulate and communicate work at the 
intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and critical 
migration, security, surveillance, and border studies. It seeks to bring 
together researchers from different disciplines and around the world and 
to initiate scientific exchange to produce synergies for relevant 
knowledge production (http://sts-migtec.org/).
The STS-MIGTEC Paper Workshop 2022 invites scholars to present and 
discuss current work in several panels, to plan future network research 
activities, and to think about interventions beyond academic research. 
We invite you to submit your paper proposal, which are concerned with 
(but not limited to) the following questions:

● How do migration and border technologies shape transnational migration 
and border regimes?
● Which material and epistemic practices manifest or counter migration 
management/control
regimes?
● What are the material/ontological politics involved and what power 
effects do such
entanglements produce?
● What data infrastructures of migration and border control emerge; how 
are these configured
alongside intersecting grids of power such as race, gender, sexuality, 
ability, nationality, age,
generation and in which ways are they/can they be contested?
● What new forms of health and migration surveillance technologies and 
infrastructures did the
Covid-19 global health pandemic trigger which now shape how we ‘see’ 
migrations and how
versions of ‘migrants’ are enacted?
● How are migrant subjects shaped and affected by migration and border 
technologies? How do
migrant subjects enact, subvert, appropriate them?
● What role do alternative, interventionist or oppositional technologies 
and infrastructures
enacted by migrant subjects or other actors in solidarity with migrant 
subjects play?
● How can we critically and publicly engage with migration and border 
control technologies and infrastructures? What can the methodological 
and conceptual repertoire of STS add to engage critically with human 
rights issues, inequalities, public ignorance linked to migration
and border control regimes? What role do science and critical scholars 
have in that process?

You can submit your paper proposal either to specific thematic panels 
(see descriptions below), or to an open panel. After reviewing and 
selecting paper proposals for open thematic panels, the scientific 
committee will invite discussants with appropriate expertise to match 
the papers of the open thematic panels so as to provide informed 
commentaries.

Please include: title, abstract (up to 250 words), and authors of the 
paper, incl. affiliations and short bios (75 words). Specify if you 
propose your paper to one of the available thematic panels (see below) 
or to an open panel. The deadline for submission is 31 October 2021. A 
variety of topics linking STS and critical 
migration/border/security/surveillance studies is welcomed.

Schedule
● 31 October – Deadline to submit paper abstracts
● mid-November – Notification about acceptance of papers
 ● 31 January – Deadline to submit full draft papers (short papers of 
4000 words or full papers of 8000 words)
● 15-17 February 2022 – Workshop Online
Contact: Please, submit paper proposals 
via mailto:(migtec.website /at/ gmail.com) (subject: STS-MIGTEC Workshop paper 
proposal). In case you submit a proposal to one of the thematic panels 
listed below please also submit to the panel convenors according to the 
information below.
STS-MIGTEC Paper Workshop team: Olga Usachova, Nina Amelung, Silvan 
Pollozek, Aristotle Tympas, Georgios Glouftsios, Maria Ullrich, Ana 
Visan, Vasiliki Makrygianni, Jasper Van Der Kist, Koen Leurs
 Panel #1. Digital urban borderlands – datafication, spatial 
inequalities, migration and the city
Udipta Boro and Fran Meissner, University of Twente, Netherlands 
contact: mailto:(f.meissner /at/ utwente.nl)
Cities have traditionally been places where migrants play a crucial part 
in the local economy and where non-citizen rights are protected. As we 
see an increasing datafication of both urban life and of migration it is 
unclear if this special role of cities will be enhanced or diminished. 
Data about migration and migrants and the ability to analyse that data 
is driven both by policy narratives and market logics – two trends that 
are central to urban debates. In urban areas we are seeing an increasing 
use of big data technologies to streamline and optimise service 
provision and to keep a tap on urban populations – migrants and 
non-migrants alike. We are witnessing the emergence of digital urban 
borderlands and we might witness processes of datafied segregation. 
Where migrants are in the city will become ever more important as new 
data analytics – often geo-analytics – are being incorporated into how 
cities are run, how urban economies function and how non-citizen 
residents are counted, categorised and how their movement is controlled 
within cities by those new systems. A growing literature suggests that 
data technologies tend to exasperate existing social inequalities and 
those inequalities are bound to be spatial and potentially infringe on 
migrants’ rights. At the same time, we have initiatives such as the 
cities for digital rights that aim to foster human and digital rights at 
the local and global level.[1] What do these developments mean for the 
position of migrants in cities and for the spatial organisation of 
inequalities in cities? What kind of city might the datafied migrant 
city be and what will the topographies of digital urban borderlands look 
like? Maybe more importantly what do we want them to look like? The 
proposed panel seeks to collate authors engaging with these or related 
questions to highlight how the urban, bordering processes and the 
spatial organisation of inequality and difference are starting to matter 
in new or altered ways in the smart city of tomorrow and today.
While not limited to these topics we would welcome papers that touch on:

● Urban surveillance systems that have a disparate impact on (urban) 
mobilities
● The implications of data technologies registering location and 
movements (e.g. Uber and
other migrant labour)
● Automated decision-making systems that hinder or facilitate migrants’ 
access to the city and
its services
● What conditions expediate the emergence digital urban borderlands
● How cities are countering the framing of migration as risk (and how 
they might partake in it)
● How migrant cities are being mediated through data and location 
technologies
● Theoretical deliberations of what the just digital migrant city might 
be and how to achieve it
in practical terms
● Empirical investigations of urban bordering processes and how these 
relate to non-citizens.
[1] https://citiesfordigitalrights.org/about


Panel #2. “Data quality” in border control and migration management: 
Politics, practices, and implications
Matthias Leese, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, Silvan Pollozek, European 
University Viadrina, Germany 
contact: mailto:(matthias.leese /at/ sipo.gess.ethz.ch), mailto:(pollozek /at/ europa-uni.de)

With the steady increase of data and databases that are mobilized for 
border control and migration management around the globe, the “quality” 
of data has started to draw the attention of regulatory bodies, asylum 
and law enforcement authorities, and non-state actors alike. Data 
quality is considered key to interoperable information systems and 
harmonized datasets and promises reliable information that can be used 
for risk analysis, situational awareness, (re-)identification, or 
profiling. But how do arrangements and practices of cleaning, filtering, 
and validating turn inaccurate, incomplete, and messy datasets into 
“high-quality” ones? Which notions of data quality are entangled with 
attempts of regulation? And how do data quality issues reconfigure 
border control and migration management on different levels?
This panel invites contributions that explore the practices, politics, 
and implications of data quality within border control and migration 
management.

Contributions might include – but are not limited to – inquiries into
● different notions, visions and problematizations migration and border 
management actors articulate regarding “data quality”
● the regulation of data quality
● data quality and the shaping of knowledge
● data maintenance
● institutional reordering and the reshuffling of power hierarchies in 
the name of “data quality”
● implications that faulty data can have on human rights and civil liberties
● how data quality can be problematized by affected individuals and 
civil society organizations.

 Panel #3. Multi-modal interventions: the promises and challenges of 
creative and collaborative engagements with matters of migration, 
borders & technology
Nina Amelung, Institute of Social Science, University of Lisbon, 
Portugal Pedro Neto, Institute of Social Science, University of Lisbon, 
Portugal Ildikó Plájás, Political Science Department, Leiden University, 
Netherlands Koen Leurs, Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht 
University, Netherlands contact: mailto:(nina.amelung /at/ ics.ulisboa.pt)

How do multiple forms of engagements with border and migration control 
regimes imagine and make a difference on the matters they critically 
engage with? This panel aims to explore diverse approaches and 
methodologies of critical epistemic engagements and interventions with 
matters of migrations, borders, and technologies. With multi-modal 
interventions, we refer to research engaging with creative audio-visual 
utterances focussed on the themes outlined above, which span across the 
broader spectrum of media genres and formats (including e.g. 
installations, documentary, film, podcasts, soundscapes, memes, graphic 
novels, mapping exercises). Of interest are epistemic interventions that 
may have the potential to make a difference in practice, including in 
the living conditions of migrants, as well as conceptual reflections on 
such collaborative, and researcher- or practitioner-led initiatives. We 
welcome a diversity of approaches with regards to the purposes and 
ambitions of interventions, but also with regards to their methodologies 
and formats.

This may include:
● Approaches trying to create reflexivity on border control technologies 
and infrastructures in order to influence the design and implementation 
processes;
● Interventions to transcend (in)visibilities of matters of ethics, 
justice, and inequalities deriving from technologies and infrastructures 
of migrations;
● Critical reflections on how to navigate through collaborations with 
research participants amidst hierarchical power relations, conflicting 
agendas, and different epistemic practices;
● Reflections on the performativity of migration scholars' epistemic 
interventions, such as
reflections on the questions of multiple roles academics may have as 
scholars, academic
experts, policy advisers, activists, or artists;
● Interventions that aim at amplifying and/or empowering migrants’ use 
of technologies and
infrastructures;
● But also engagements which aim to stimulate alternatives to current 
migration regimes.
We are also explicitly interested in the diversity of research and 
dissemination designs, and the diversity of methodologies collecting and 
analyzing data, including (participatory) action research, visual and 
multimodal ethnography, digital and other creative methodologies.
We encourage submissions from all disciplines (including STS, 
media/communication, critical data, anthropology, and/ or geography) 
which are either empirically grounded practice-based interventions 
(incl. film, participatory methodologies, art installations, 
performances); case studies of concrete engagements, and interventions; 
or, theoretical papers exploring scholars’ many ways of engaging with 
matters of migration, borders & technology.
 Panel #4. Contesting “the other” in Urban Data and (Non-)Knowledge 
Practices
Sylvana Jahre, Geography Department, Humboldt University of Berlin, 
Germany contact: mailto:(Sylvana.jahre /at/ hu-berlin.de)

In the frame of the European border regime, scholars have demonstrated 
how technology and data serve to systematically stigmatize, exclude, and 
oppress migrant populations through mechanisms of criminalization, 
identification, and social sorting (Metcalfe & Dencik 2019, Tazzioli 
2019). As such practices are not limited to border regions but find 
itself deeply embedded into society, this panel aims at bringing 
together research on epistemic and political processes within the urban 
realm that either focus on the underlying discriminatory design of the 
socio-technical world that normalizes racial hierarchies (Benjamin, 
2016: 148), or (research on) interventionist or oppositional practices 
and technologies.
Urban research and knowledge production, urban policies, urban data, and 
technologies are all too often presented as being neutral and objective, 
as their subject is “the city” and migration is treated as rather 
incidental. However, in doing so urban scholars and practitioners not 
only fail to acknowledge the various discriminatory and racist 
practices, but they also contribute to the reproduction of such mechanisms.
Approaches from feminist, postcolonial, and critical race STS are 
crucial to critically engage with power asymmetries that are enacted 
and/or reproduced through science, and technologies in the city. The 
panel invites research contesting the urban as objective and neutral and 
pointing to cities as frontiers for activating multiple truths, as well 
as sites of subversion, counter-narratives, and protest.
Possible topics can encompass but are not limited to:

● urban systems of categorisation and their contestations
● the framing of migration in urban knowledge production, as well as 
subversion of such
knowledge and practices of counter-knowledge production
● racialised urban systems of control and surveillance
● missing data with regard to cities
● practices by migrant subjects and organizations in solidarity to 
migrants that contest, protest
and subvert one or more of the above-mentioned issues

Literature cited:
Benjamin, Ruha (2016): Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS and the 
Carceral Imagination.
Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 2, pp. 145-156.
Metcalfe & Dencik (2019): The politics of big borders: Data (in)justice 
and the governance of
refugees. first 
Monday, https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/9934/7749.
Tazzioli, Martina (2019): The Making of Migration. The Biopolitics of 
Mobility at Europe’s Borders. London: SAGE Publications.



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