[Commlist] CFP Data Matters in Migration and Border Control

Data Matters in Migration and Border Control
Workshop 2024
8 – 10 April 2023
organized by the STS-MIGTEC Network
Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University & Online

Call for Papers

The research network http://sts-migtec.org/ invites scholars at 
different career stages to a research workshop. We invite contributions 
at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS), critical 
migration, security, surveillance and border studies, and related 
disciplines, which are concerned with (but not limited to) the following 
themes:

How do migration and border technologies shape transnational migration 
and border regimes? Which epistemic practices manifest or counter 
migration management/control regimes? What are the material 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, (dis)ability, nationality, age, and generation, and 
in which ways can they be contested?
How are migrant subjects affected by migration and border technologies? 
How do migrant subjects enact, subvert, and appropriate them? What role 
do alternative civic technologies and infrastructures enacted by migrant 
subjects or other actors in solidarity play?
Which role do digital technologies play in the governance of asylum and 
humanitarian protection? What role do media platforms and 
infrastructures play for Ukrainian refugees in accessing protection? To 
what extent is the support for Ukrainian refugees based on existing 
socio-spatial networks and digital infrastructures?
Which role does technology play in the increasing convergence of 
immigration enforcement and the criminal justice system? How do 
information systems and underlying epistemic practices change power 
dynamics and affect immigrant rights?
How is open source intelligence (OSINT) through social media, online 
forums or satellite imagery becoming relevant for both governance and 
public scrutiny in contexts of war, persecution and migration?
Which kinds of polities and administrative assemblages emerge from 
security practices and infrastructures of registering, categorizing, and 
sorting? To what extent can we detect long-term lineages of oppression, 
for example dating back to colonial practices of differentiating between 
populations and to what extent are institutional transformations 
observable? Which epistemic orders are likely to emerge and stay?
How can we critically and publicly engage with migration and border 
control technologies and infrastructures? What can the methodological 
and conceptual repertoire of STS and related fields add to engage 
critically with human rights issues, inequalities, and publics? What 
role do science and critical scholars have in that process and what can 
they learn from civil society?
You can submit your papers either to specific thematic panels (see 
descriptions below) or to open panels(addressing the themes above):

Panel 1: Legal Challenges in Datafying EU Migration, Asylum and Border 
Management
Niovi Vavoula, Queen Mary University of London, mailto:(n.vavoula /at/ qmul.ac.uk)
Panel 2: The technopolitics of digital crimmigration control: Expertise, 
experimentation, and democratic politics
Samuel Singler, University of Essex, mailto:(samuel.singler /at/ essex.ac.uk)
Nina Amelung, Universidade de Lisboa, mailto:(nina.amelung /at/ ics.ulisboa.pt)
Sanja Milivojevic, University of 
Bristol, mailto:(sanja.milivojevic /at/ bristol.ac.uk)
Panel 3: Being Political? Navigating criticality and dissent with(in) 
and beyond STS
Stephan Scheel, Leuphana University, mailto:(stephan.scheel /at/ leuphana.de)
Jasper van der Kist, University of Viadrina, mailto:(vanderkist /at/ europa-uni.de)
Panel 4: The impact of open-source and other digital evidence on the 
governance of asylum and criminal justice in the context of war and 
persecution
Maarten Bolhuis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, mailto:(m.p.bolhuis /at/ vu.nl)

Submission procedure
Please submit paper proposals 
to mailto:(migtec.website /at/ gmail.com) (subject: STS-MIGTEC/PC Workshop 
paper proposal). In case you submit a proposal to one of the thematic 
panels please additionally cc: the panel convenors.

Please include the 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 or to open 
panels and if you would like to participate on-site. The deadline for 
submissions is 30 November 2023.

Schedule
30 November 2023 – Deadline to submit paper abstracts
15 December 2023 – Notification about acceptance of papers
31 March 2023 – Deadline to submit short papers (of approximately 4000 
words)
8-10 April 2023 – Workshop (hybrid)

Fees & travel grants
There is no workshop fee. Lunch, coffee breaks and dinner need to be 
paid individually. We are pursuing opportunities to accommodate scholars 
who seek financial support to attend the event. If you wish to apply for 
a grant, please indicate your interest with your submission. The grants 
aim to support researchers who lack funding otherwise. We cannot 
guarantee that all requests for travel grants will be granted.

Organization
The annual workshop is brought to you by the STS-MIGTEC network with 
support from Utrecht University’s Department of Media and Culture; the 
Graduate Gender Programme and the UU Governing the Digital Society (GDS) 
focus area, in particular its special interest group on digital migration.

The http://sts-migtec.orghttp://sts-migtec.org is an independent network 
of scholars at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) 
and critical migration, security and border studies. It aims to 
stimulate and communicate state-of-the-art research. 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.

Workshop organizing team: Koen Leurs, Jasper van der Kist, Nina Amelung, 
Olga Usachova, Silvan Pollozek, Kinan Alajak, Ivan Josipovic


Thematic Panel 1: Legal Challenges in Datafying EU Migration, Asylum and 
Border Management

Dr. Niovi Vavoula, Queen Mary University of 
London, mailto:(n.vavoula /at/ qmul.ac.uk)

The past few decades have seen the significant rise in highly intrusive 
technologies which enable the processing of personal data of almost the 
entirety of foreigners. Biometric identifiers are routinely collected to 
enable identification and various Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems 
are mushrooming promising to enable predicting migration, assessing the 
degree of riskiness different groups of foreigners pose and streamlining 
migration and asylum procedures. The datafication of migration, asylum 
and border management poses significant challenges for various 
fundamental rights, such as the rights to privacy and data protection, 
procedural rights, such as the right to an effective remedy and the 
right to good administration and the principle of non-discrimination. 
This panel will provide an overview of these challenges through a 
selection of topical issues, such as the processing of facial images for 
facial recognition purposes, algorithmic profiling in EU large-scale IT 
systems and procedural safeguards in algorithmized asylum procedures.

Thematic Panel 2: The technopolitics of digital crimmigration control: 
Expertise, experimentation, and democratic politics

Samuel Singler, University of Essex, mailto:(samuel.singler /at/ essex.ac.uk)
Nina Amelung, Universidade de Lisboa, mailto:(nina.amelung /at/ ics.ulisboa.pt)
Sanja Milivojevic, University of 
Bristol, mailto:(sanja.milivojevic /at/ bristol.ac.uk)

The fields of criminal justice and border control are key sites for 
enacting boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in democratic societies. 
Both fields are undergoing rapid digitization, promoted by a complex 
network of public and private developers of new digital tools. 
Simultaneously, the boundary between these fields has become blurred due 
to their merger into what border criminologists now call a system of 
‘crimmigration control.’
This panel critically examines the implications of digital bordering for 
democratic politics by inquiring into the interaction between border 
control technologies and criminal justice. We understand democratic 
politics as political decision making dedicated to principles of 
justice, rule of law, inclusion, political representation, fairness, and 
democratic governance committed to values of accountability and 
transparency. However, democratic political systems fail to keep up with 
the ideals they promote. Upholding rights and due process protections in 
the criminal justice system is especially important, to avoid misuse of 
public authority and ensure democratic legitimacy. Yet, research has 
shown that criminal justice practices are being reshaped by the 
introduction of new digital technologies originally intended for use in 
border control contexts. Function creep, whereby border control tools 
are later deployed for law enforcement purposes, is ubiquitous. As 
criminal justice systems are being reshaped by the introduction of 
digital border control tools, and these tools themselves have been 
developed by public and private technical experts, these experts have an 
increasingly influential—yet also indirect and inadvertent—role in 
shaping the boundaries of democratic political decision making.
The increasing influence of technical experts on practices of border 
control and criminal justice, combined with the rapidity of 
technological innovation, also raises the question of how academics 
should respond to these developments. Should researchers confine 
themselves to critiquing already-operational systems at a distance, or 
should they focus on and engage with anticipatory governance about 
future developments and promises as well? Should academics become a part 
of the technology creation process and seek to close the distance 
between practice and critique, or avoid such collaboration? We invite 
submissions focusing on the interplay between technical expertise, 
democratic politics, e.g. political decision making and democratic 
governance committed to values of accountability and transparency, and 
digital crimmigration control, addressing such topics as:
How do digital technologies circulating from law enforcement into border 
control and vice versa shape criminal justice and border control 
practices respectively?
What are the implications of digitizing crimmigration control for 
democratic politics, e.g. politics committed to democratic values such 
as accountability, legitimacy, transparency, inclusion, participation?
How do private and public technical experts shape crimmigration control 
practices?
What happens to democratic values of public accountability, transparency 
and legitimacy in the criminal justice system when private technical 
expertise drives technical innovation at the digital border?
How should we practice critique of digital crimmigration control? What 
are the moral dilemmas involved when trying to follow Donna Haraways’ 
suggestion to “stay with the trouble” in this particular ambiguous 
contexts and how can we navigate them?


Thematic Panel 3: Being Political? Navigating criticality and dissent 
with(in) and beyond STS

Prof. Stephan Scheel, Leuphana University, mailto:(stephan.scheel /at/ leuphana.de)
Dr. Jasper van der Kist, University of 
Viadrina, mailto:(vanderkist /at/ europa-uni.de)

In the past decade an intellectually inspiring dialogue has evolved at 
the intersection of STS and critical border, migration and security 
studies. Since border and migration management, as well as migratory 
practices, have become increasingly digitalized and technologized, 
critical scholars have turned to STS for valuable insights and 
approaches. However, as Maria Puig de la Casa aptly points out, ‘nothing 
comes without its world’.

Many concepts and approaches in STS have been developed in relatively 
consensual and irenic locations like the laboratory or the hospital. But 
their real test lies in their application to sites and situations that 
are teeming with power struggles, political contestation and 
characterized by mechanisms of control, domination and coercion – such 
as detention centers, biometric borders or airports security checkpoints.

After all, STS teaches us that everything transforms as it travels and 
gets translated from one situation to the next. Starting from this key 
insight, this panel proposes that the dialogue between STS and other 
fields should not degenerate into a blind applicationism or an 
intellectual one-way street. Rather, we see the encounter with the 
research topics, questions and concerns of other fields such as critical 
border, migration and security studies as a chance to develop, refine 
and rethink concepts and approaches from STS into new directions.

For instance, how to remain sensitive to borders and boundaries with an 
approach that thinks in terms of networks and fluids? How can we shift 
our focus from the practitioners and experts cherished by STS  who 
mobilise powerful assemblages, technological devices and evidence to the 
tactics and practices of those who inhabit marginalized and excluded 
positions? And finally, how do we maintain critical and political 
engaged with(in) a field that pre-defined eschews notions of power, 
politics or relations of domination? Is the preference for a flat 
ontology tenable in highly power-saturated research contexts that have 
been shaped by colonial domination, performances of sovereign power and 
intersecting manifestations of racism, capitalism, sexism and other 
expressions of domination and violence?


Thematic Panel 4: The impact of open-source and other digital evidence 
on the governance of asylum and criminal justice in the context of war 
and persecution

Dr. Maarten Bolhuis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, mailto:(m.p.bolhuis /at/ vu.nl)

Digitalization increasingly affects the governance of asylum and 
humanitarian protection in Europe, pushed by a more general trend 
towards digitalization of bureaucracies, and an increasingly dominant 
logic of national security and crime control. The need to adapt 
bureaucratic processes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as 
a further catalyst. Digitalization touches on all domains of migration 
and asylum: from forecasting migration patterns to advanced border 
control through document verification and behavior recognition, remote 
hearing, the use of open-source intelligence, speech recognition and 
analysis of data from mobile devices to inform decision-making, and the 
use of digital tools for immigration detention, relocation, and settlement.

With increasing access of both migrants and governments to digital 
technology, public actors can benefit from an abundance of information 
generated by private actors that was not accessible before. Better 
access to information has the potential to improve decision-making and 
access to protection, for instance by reducing human bias and 
arbitrariness in decision-making. The increasing access to and use of 
digital technology also offers a potential for more accountability and 
better public scrutiny, for instance because it allows private actors to 
report on the behavior of public actors in border control. Despite this 
potential, digitalization also raises concerns, for instance regarding 
the privacy of migrants, bias in algorithms and decision-making, and 
mission creep.

This panel seeks to shed light on a variety of developments in this area.




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