wl-4122-Borders Know Best: Technologised Borders and Discriminatory Migration Practices

Stricter migration policies and anti-immigration incentives are being implemented across several Global North countries like the UK. While these decisions are framed as measures to combat employment scarcity and cost of living crises, the narratives employed by politicians and policy-makers hint otherwise. Fraught with xenophobia, the body of the immigrant bears negative connotations of job-stealers, freeloaders and miscreants. Discrimination begins at the point-of-entry, that is, the border, which becomes a site of violence itself. Borders are not objective. They construct the identities of ‘insiders’ versus ‘outsiders’, building upon governmental agendas, historical structures of discrimination, and monetary incentives. With increasing technologisation of the border, screening procedures heavily depend on automated mechanisms and artificial intelligence. What is overlooked is that technology has biases built into it, entrenched in histories of imperialism and hegemony where notions of racial and cultural superiorities are naturalised. This article engages with the UK’s refugee crisis and the Illegal Migration Act 2023 in the context of the nation’s longstanding anti-refugee policies and attitude. Discursive practices often vilify and victimise refugees, shaping socio-political perceptions of them, which ultimately dictates the data within informs technology. Therefore, misconceptions, stereotypes and discrimination are reinforced through technologies and border infrastructure, and consequently shape them further.