How do digital innovations in border enforcement and labor markets reshape migrant experiences?
This session will explore the evolving relationship between migration, technology, and state control, highlighting how digital innovations in border enforcement and labor markets reshape migrant experiences.
Spanning North America and Europe, the papers to be presented investigate the interplay between technological change, migrant agency, and state responses, offering a comparative perspective on contemporary migration governance.
The first paper examines the digitisation of border enforcement across Mexico, the US, and Canada, revealing how technological tools—marketed as rational and humane solutions—emerge as countermeasures to migrant resistance. From the now-discontinued CBP One App to surveillance-driven detention alternatives and deportation geofencing, the paper traces the paradoxes of digital bordering.
The second paper shifts to the European agricultural sector, comparing the Netherlands and the UK to analyse how automation interacts with labor institutions and migrant work. It questions whether technological change reduces reliance on migrant labor or entrenches new forms of precarity. By combining ethnographic research, policy analysis, and institutional comparisons, the session reconsiders the role of technology in shaping migrant experiences. It challenges prevailing narratives of technological progress, revealing how digital tools serve both as instruments of control and as sites of contestation and resistance.
The Migration Working Group (MWG) is a researcher-led research group, whose aim is to foster exchange on the latest, cutting-edge migration research and give the opportunity to early career scholars and PhD researchers to present their research.
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