BOOK: The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power

The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power, NYU Press, is coming out early next year. It is a very timely discussion of how big data, artificial intelligence, algorithms, social media platforms, and journalism are used to "manage" both the people moving through borders, and the stories told about crossing these borders. Digital borders are already around us. Some of us are privileged enough to pass through them seamlessly, or to ignore them. For others, their powers are now all-encompassing: digital technologies' ability to stop, exclude, detain or erase are substantial, and much harder to challenge.

What is the role of digital technologies is shaping migration today? How do digital infrastructures, platforms, and institutions control the flow of people at the border? And how do they also control the public narratives of migration as a “crisis”? Finally, how do migrants themselves use these same platforms to speak back and make themselves heard in the face of hardship and hostility? (book's description)

One of the key promisses of the book is to offer a critical discussion of how digitised state violence is manifesting as "management", affecting those most vulnerable and least able to escape the clutches of digital governance. And yet, they are neither powerless nor voiceless - and the book centers their stories, while remaining thoughtfully attentive to the power relations and structures, within which these stories are told.