An infrastructural approach to the digital Hostile Environment

ABSTRACT

This article delves into the ongoing consequences of UK ‘Hostile Environment’ policies, notably the Windrush Scandal and the challenges of techno-solutionism in migration governance. There is an exploration of how borders have permeated the internal boundaries of the UK and pushed private citizens and institutions to become new border agents. In this article there is a reflection on the infrastructure that has become reinforced, made visible and technologically upholds Hostile Environment policies. This article investigates the Home Office’s new case working system, Atlas, to illuminate the intersection of border policies, technology and ethics. Through disentangling the political promises placed into the new case working system, this article argues the technological solutions to unjust policies are doomed to repeat and reinforce historic racialised practices. This article argues that technology projects in development, like Atlas, offer an opportunity to identify new private actors responsible for maintaining internal borders within the UK, private technology consultancy groups. Tracing the privatisation of border technology crystallises the new power dynamics introduced through technological projects developed to translate the goals of the Hostile Environment into operational technology used by the Home Office.

KEYWORDS:

• Infrastructures
• digital borders
• databases
• Hostile Environment
• migration governance

Acknowledgements

This work was indebted to Dr. Ana Valdivia on her methodology for deconstructing private actors and the border. I am grateful for the edits and suggestions from Dr. Stephen Damianos who elevated an earlier draft. Thank you to Dr Natasha Saunders and Dr. Alexander Sager for editing and curating the Ethics of Border Control in a Digital Age Symposium.

Notes

1 The term ‘illegal’ to describe people is inherently derogatory. Humans cannot be illegal. Illegality is produced and maintained as a technology of control to dehumanise people on the move (De Genova 2013).

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kaelynn Narita

Kaelynn Narita is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her work focuses on the intersection of technology and borders, focusing on the United Kingdom's Hostile Enviorment policies. Narita has a Security Studies and International Law background and applies both disciplines to explore contemporary bordering politics.