Technology and Digital Futures

This thematic group focuses on the relationship between technology, border control, and criminal justice. Technical devices and tools—both low tech objects like fences and walls, and high tech digital databases and surveillance systems—are central to the daily enactment of crimmigration control. By focusing specifically on the technopolitics of crimmigration control, activities in this thematic group highlight how the logics of border control and criminal justice are put into action through the development of new technologies at the border and beyond. Conversely, we also focus on how these technological innovations influence how crimmigration control is conceptualized and operationalized.

The group also foregrounds opportunities for technology co-creation and actively shaping digital futures. Given the influence of new technical innovations on crimmigration control, we ask what effective critique looks like in a digital age, and how border criminologists can actively influence what the digital border will look like in the future.

We seek to promote interdisciplinary research focusing on border control technologies and create collaborative linkages between researchers and civil society actors to inquire into the risks and benefits of these new tools. We will, for instance, publish themed posts on the Border Criminologies blog and arrange panel discussions that bring together academics, policymakers, and industry professionals. We are also pursuing collaborations with other research networks and civil society organizations, such as STS-MIGTEC and AlgorithmWatch, aiming to arrange shared panels, workshops, and other events.

Please contact Samuel Singler (samuel.singler@essex.ac.uk) or Sanja Milivojevic (sanja.milivojevic@bristol.ac.uk) for more information and to join the group.