[Commlist] Call for Papers: 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/ 
<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) 
<mailto:(michelle.pfeifer1 /at/ tu-dresden.de)> /

/Dr Philipp Seuferling (LSE):(p.seuferling /at/ lse.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(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 
<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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