DATAMIG COST ACTION meeting of working group 3: Laboratory
Futures of resistance to datafied migration and border controls II: A scenario-based strategy workshop
The Futures of Resistance workshop will take place from 9:30am to 4:30pm on 18 June, and from 9:30am to 1pm on 19 June.
The workshop will be held at Migrant Futures Institute, Goldsmiths, University of London in New Cross, SE14 6NW.
The event will take place in a hybrid format.
Borders are changing. Across the world, states make ever more use of personal data, biometrics, and automated systems to control and track our movements. The data trails we create going about our daily lives are used to hunt, frighten and deport people. Social media accounts are screened to refuse travellers with the “wrong” ideas or “suspect” networks. Tech companies work hand in glove with government administrations to implement increasingly draconian, racist and classist policies. Digital technologies first implemented to control ‘migrants’ are being rolled out to ‘citizens’ , and as their capabilities become ever more powerful, what – if anything – now protects us and how do we protect ourselves and each other?
With ‘datafied’ migration control now fully exploiting the fact that social life is lived increasingly digitally, what is the future of our resistance? Social media campaigns and everyday refusal of using products and services from companies enriching themselves through the borders industry are vital tactics. But it is becoming ever more difficult to avoid e.g. Dell, HP and Microsoft. Moreover, we need to plan and vision: what might our struggle look like in 10 or 25 years’ time? What forms of digital surveillance and control might we anticipate and how can we pre-empt them? What tools, infrastructures and relationships must we create to move away from a world where identities are biometrically fixed and one’s right to move or stay exists solely in a database, and can be changed with a simple entry?
The Working Group 3 of the EU COST Action DATAMIG together with the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures, Goldsmiths Migrant Futures Institute organize a futures workshop to chart visions of a No Borders future in a datafied world. We will consider near future scenarios of technologies used at the digital border such as:
1. behavioral biometrics,
2. social media monitoring,
3. digital travel credentials and immigration status.
We will work with provocations to think about the futures of resistance. What must we nurture? What infrastructures must we build? What alliances can we foster?
The workshop will be informative, providing information on the latest forms of digital border control and the companies which build them, but also imaginative. The intention is to think beyond the struggles of the present to project a direction of travel for the wider no borders movement in an era of digital control.
Due to funding restrictions we can only accept a limited number of participants. We will curate a diverse group of participants including those with lived experience of organising against the UK’s (digitised) immigration system.
Important Dates
If you are interested in joining onsite please submit to this call your expression of interest until 20 May 2026 by sending an email to all emails: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Participants are selected and informed by 22 May 2026.
Submissions
We ask participants to either assist with documentation of the event, e.g. taking minutes and co-authoring a report after the event, or to present a ‘scenario based provocation’ to stimulate the collective discussion. We invite you to share expressions of interest for your participation by choosing between the two modes of contributions to the workshop and responding to the questions / tasks described below:
How do you want to contribute to the workshop?
A. By contributing to the documentation and reporting of the event? A small group of participants collectively will take minutes and afterwards co-authors together with the organizers a report that shall be turned into a resource that can inspire other civil society and academic collectives interested in the resistance to datafied migration and border controls.
Please submit to us:
1. Please share at least one example of your own work or an example you are interested in around resistance to datafied migration and border control regime (methodologies, approaches, and collaborations across academia and/or civil society actors)? If possible, please provide references, links. (max. 300 words)
2. What is your motivation to participate in the workshop? (2-3 sentences)
3. Please share a bio (max. 150 words).
Or:
B. By contributing with a 15-minutes scenario based provocation that envisions possible futures of the next 10-15 years and relates to some of the questions of the call: what forms of digital surveillance and control might we anticipate and how can we pre-empt them? What tools, infrastructures and relationships must we create to move away from a world where identities are digitally and biometrically fixed? What forms of resistance must we nurture? What can the future of collaborationacross civil society and academia look like? What infrastructures must we build? What alliances can we foster? If your provocations can relate to behavioral biometrics, social media monitoring, digital travel credentials and immigration status, even better, but this is not mandatory.
Please submit to us:
1. Please share an abstract of your provocation (max. 300 words).
2. What is your motivation to participate in the workshop? (2-3 sentences)
3. Please share a bio (max. 150 words).
DATAMIG WG 3 organizing team
Travis Van Isacker, Bridget Anderson, Sanja Milivojevic (ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures) Mirca Madianou (Goldsmiths Migrant Futures Institute) Nina Amelung (CIES-Iscte)
