Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SECURITY FLOWS (Enacting border security in the digital age: political worlds of data forms, flows and frictions.)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-06-01 do 2023-11-30
What is the problem being addressed?
Today, we give data about ourselves almost all the time. More and more data is now collected as the border, as migrants are identified, as their asylum applications are processed, and refugee status is granted or refused to them. More and more actors are collecting this data and sharing it with other actors. What does this increased collection of data by varied actors and data exchange mean for border governance and security, and for migrants themselves? What are the political and ethical implications of these wide-ranging transformations?
Why is it important for society?
We currently lack an understanding of how the collection, processing and exchange of data have wide-reaching implications for governmental and non-governmental actors, their decision-making, democratic accountability, migrants and citizens, and their fundamental rights. Little is known about how data is used, what happens when data is wrong, mistaken or missing, and how migrants and refugees are affected. Vulnerable people often do not have the financial and material resources to rectify mistakes, challenge errors and enforce data protection and other rights. But they are also important questions for everyone who is wondering how the data they give – whether they are aware of it or not – can affect their lives, their rights and their participation in society.
What are the overall objectives?
SECURITY FLOWS has four key objectives:
i) The project aims to offer a novel understanding of the relation between datafication and knowledge in border security practices. While data is often thought to be immediately translatable into knowledge, the relation between data and knowledge is a fraught one. Our key innovation here it to supplement an understanding of how data helps us know people and things with how it can render them less intelligible, obscure, or ambiguous. The project analysis how knowing and not-knowing are produced and distributed among the many actors involved in the governance of borders and security.
ii) The project proposes to develop an experimental multi-modal methodology of ‘following the data’ in order to analyse how data flows in practice, which forms of data are more amenable to movement, and which frictions emerge along the way. We use a multifaceted set of established and digital methods to trace the complex movements of data through an empirical analysis of three case studies that ‘follow the data’ in border encounters at key sites along the Eastern, Central and Western Mediterranean routes.
iii) As capacities of data collection, processing and mobility transform power relations between existing actors, some actors become more marginal and others more central to border security. The project will explore how data shapes decision-making and transforms power relations between different actors, including migrants themselves.
iv) The project will analyse the implications of these wide-ranging transformations for data protection and the rights of both citizens and non-citizens. We attend to three ethical dimensions: accountability, citizenship and agency.
Today, we give data about ourselves almost all the time. More and more data is now collected as the border, as migrants are identified, as their asylum applications are processed, and refugee status is granted or refused to them. More and more actors are collecting this data and sharing it with other actors. What does this increased collection of data by varied actors and data exchange mean for border governance and security, and for migrants themselves? What are the political and ethical implications of these wide-ranging transformations?
Why is it important for society?
We currently lack an understanding of how the collection, processing and exchange of data have wide-reaching implications for governmental and non-governmental actors, their decision-making, democratic accountability, migrants and citizens, and their fundamental rights. Little is known about how data is used, what happens when data is wrong, mistaken or missing, and how migrants and refugees are affected. Vulnerable people often do not have the financial and material resources to rectify mistakes, challenge errors and enforce data protection and other rights. But they are also important questions for everyone who is wondering how the data they give – whether they are aware of it or not – can affect their lives, their rights and their participation in society.
What are the overall objectives?
SECURITY FLOWS has four key objectives:
i) The project aims to offer a novel understanding of the relation between datafication and knowledge in border security practices. While data is often thought to be immediately translatable into knowledge, the relation between data and knowledge is a fraught one. Our key innovation here it to supplement an understanding of how data helps us know people and things with how it can render them less intelligible, obscure, or ambiguous. The project analysis how knowing and not-knowing are produced and distributed among the many actors involved in the governance of borders and security.
ii) The project proposes to develop an experimental multi-modal methodology of ‘following the data’ in order to analyse how data flows in practice, which forms of data are more amenable to movement, and which frictions emerge along the way. We use a multifaceted set of established and digital methods to trace the complex movements of data through an empirical analysis of three case studies that ‘follow the data’ in border encounters at key sites along the Eastern, Central and Western Mediterranean routes.
iii) As capacities of data collection, processing and mobility transform power relations between existing actors, some actors become more marginal and others more central to border security. The project will explore how data shapes decision-making and transforms power relations between different actors, including migrants themselves.
iv) The project will analyse the implications of these wide-ranging transformations for data protection and the rights of both citizens and non-citizens. We attend to three ethical dimensions: accountability, citizenship and agency.
From the beginning of the project, the SECURITY FLOWS team has focused on conceptual and methodological development to address the project objectives. Conceptually, we have developed a critical understanding of i) what is data, ii) what can be known from data. Politically, they have inquired into iii) how data reconfigures power relations and ethically, iv) what data means for access to rights and agency. The project has shown that what counts as data varies among actors and at times actors avoid the terminology of data in favour of terms like ‘evidence’ or ‘information’. Moreover, while data is assumed to lead to more efficient, fast, and precise knowledge, researchers have shown how data has errors, it is often opaque and is often presented in formats that are difficult to understand for non-experts. We have analysed how data and digital devices at borders can reduce rather than enhance access to rights and information. Finally, collecting and ordering data is not only done by governmental and non-governmental actors, but by migrants themselves.
Methodologically, the project combines methods of textual analysis, archival analysis, digital methods with ethnographic research and interviewing. Given the COVID-19 restrictions on travel and face-to-face research, we have so far conducted research in four countries: Greece (remote), Italy (remote, archival and face-to-face), France (remote and face-to-face), the UK (remote and archival). We have participated in online seminars, training and events organised by civil society organisations, EU agencies and other governmental organisations.
The team have taken part in over 30 conferences, workshops, seminars and public events. In 2021, we held a two-day workshop with researchers and civil society actors on the topic of ‘‘Datafication technologies, counter-power and resistance at the EU Borders’. We have published five journal articles and a book.
Methodologically, the project combines methods of textual analysis, archival analysis, digital methods with ethnographic research and interviewing. Given the COVID-19 restrictions on travel and face-to-face research, we have so far conducted research in four countries: Greece (remote), Italy (remote, archival and face-to-face), France (remote and face-to-face), the UK (remote and archival). We have participated in online seminars, training and events organised by civil society organisations, EU agencies and other governmental organisations.
The team have taken part in over 30 conferences, workshops, seminars and public events. In 2021, we held a two-day workshop with researchers and civil society actors on the topic of ‘‘Datafication technologies, counter-power and resistance at the EU Borders’. We have published five journal articles and a book.
Our main achievements concern interdisciplinary research that combines knowledge from computer science and social sciences, more specifically fields of critical security studies, border studies, and science and technology studies. Conceptually, the project has advanced the analysis of the effects of datafication in relation to knowledge, politics, and ethics. Firstly, we have shown that the collection and exchange of data produces both knowledge and non-knowledge. In a forthcoming article in the Review of International Studies, Claudia Aradau and Sarah Perret have argued that errors and fakes become objects of controversy in border governance. While errors remain the privilege of experts, migrants but under suspicion of faking or deceiving. We have suggested that the possibility of error needs to be extended to migrants and not just to experts. Secondly, we have unpacked how the algorithmic processing of data brings about transformations in how decisions are made, how accountability is understood and what ethics means. The book Algorithmic Reason: The New Government of Self and Other, which is forthcoming with Oxford University Press, unpacks these transformations. Thirdly, we have explored the effects that the work of collecting and ordering data has for migrants themselves and how the asylum processes affect their lives and political participation. Methodologically, we have used digital methods to open new avenues for research in critical security studies and border studies. Through interdisciplinary research and digital methods, we will be able to develop in-depth insights on the use of data by different professionals and its impact on the asylum process(es), including legal redress.