[Commlist] CFP Conference When was the “SmartBorder”? Tracing Critical Histories of Media Technological Border and Migration Control

*Call for Papers*

*When was the “Smart Border”?** Tracing Critical Histories of Media
Technological Border and Migration Control*

Location: TU Dresden, Germany, hosted by the Chair of Digital Cultures

Date: 15–17 November 2023

Format: in-person presentations

Submission deadline: *14 July 2023*

Conference website: https://smartborderconference.com/

Confirmed keynote speaker:
Dr Iván Chaar-López<https://www.ivanchaar.net/>, University of Texas Austin

The conference is organized in collaboration between the Chair of Digital
Cultures at TU Dresden, Germany, and the Department of Media and
Communications at The London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE), UK. The event is funded by the Internationalization Strategy of TU
Dresden and the LSE Global Research Fund.

Organizing team:

Dr Michelle Pfeifer (TU Dresden): (michelle.pfeifer1 /at/ tu-dresden.de)
Dr Philipp Seuferling (LSE): (p.seuferling /at/ lse.ac.uk)

The buzzword “smart borders” commonly captures the widespread
digitalization and automation of migration control and the expansion of
racial capitalist security regimes by technological means. Yet, the term
describes only the most recent instance of media technologies constituting
and enabling state bordering. While states around the world rely on and
invest in ever newer “smart” technologies to control migration, these
developments stand in longer historical continuities, not least hailing
from projects of mobility and population control of colonialism, racism,
eugenics, or carceral regimes (Chaar-López, 2019; Weitzberg, 2020; Pfeifer,
2021; Leurs & Seuferling, 2022; Tazzioli, 2023).

This conference aims to address the international research field on
temporalities and histories of smart borders, to trace genealogies and
longue durées of media, communication, and information technologies in the
control of borders and migration. Such histories can be traced on different
levels: materialities of media technologies, uses and practices around
them, struggles against bordering tactics and technologies, as well as
socio-technical imaginaries of what these technologies can and cannot do –
all of which are characterized by continuities and change. While media
shape borders across time, media technologies are also shaped by and emerge
from projects of bordering. In this sense, borders can be better understood
by attending to their media, and vice versa, media histories more generally
can be explored at the border – a “technological testing ground” (Molnar,
2022) historically and today.

Questions guiding the conference are:
 *   How can we understand histories of the “smart border” within histories
of media technology and digitalization, as well as within histories of
territorialization, biopolitics, racial capitalism, colonialism, and
bordered states?
 *   How are technological innovation as well as processes of
digitalization and computation historically tested, developed, and trialed
in the context of border and migration control?
 *   How has the entanglement of media technologies with borders evolved
over time?
 *   How can historical perspectives on smart borders advance critiques of
violence and discrimination enacted by smart border regimes today?

We explicitly welcome papers that engage with queer, feminist, decolonial,
postcolonial, abolitionist, and critical race perspectives on the histories
of mediated bordering.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
 *   Theoretical perspectives on “smart borders” across time
 *   Methodological approaches to historicizing “smart borders”
 *   Histories of digitalization and automation, in contexts of mobility,
migration, and border control
 *   Studies of historical empirical contexts of mediated borders
 *   Histories of border and technological regulation, policy-making, and
law
 *   The role of risk, uncertainty, and security in genealogies of border
and migration control
 *   Genealogies of datafication of people on the move
 *   Histories of biometrics, surveillance, policing, and carcerality
 *   Mediated containment, surveillance, and control of people on the move,
mobility, and movement concerning imperatives of digitalization,
automation, and artificial intelligence
 *   Histories of struggles against and contestations of “smart border”
regimes

*Submission guidelines:*
Submissions should include an abstract (300-400 words), as well as a short
biographical note (100-150 words). Please use this form:
https://forms.office.com/e/fmhfvNQE5T

The submission deadline is 14 July 2023. We plan to notify applicants about
proposal acceptance by 4 August 2023.

Funding will be available to support travel and accommodation of invited
speakers. Please note whether you need financial assistance in the
submission form.


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