SEMINAR CANCELLED DUE TO UCU STRIKES.
Seminar 3 in a series on ‘Forced Migration and Digital Technologies: (Dis)continuities in Actors and Power Relations’. Seminar abstract: How do digital infrastructures control transnational mobility and the lives of migrants during and after they cross boundaries? And how do digital media shape imaginaries of transnational mobility as a crisis and of migrants as people who need to be feared or pittied? In this presentation, we argue that western governance of migration is now enacted through a technologized border that divides Us/Them and inside/outside. This is the digital border, which is performed both territorially and symbolically. We thus argue for a holistic approach to communication and migration, showing how intersecting technologies and imaginaries of transnational mobility turn the border into a multi-nodal site of platforms, actors, connections, voices and values. We draw on empirical insights from across Europe, collected through our research on the digital border over seven-year (2015-2022).