When was the Smart "Border"? Tracing Critical Histories of Media Technological Border and Migration Control | 15-17 November 2023

When was the “Smart Border”?

Conference Website

The conference is organized in collaboration between the Chair of Digital Cultures at TU Dresden, Germany, and the Department of Media and Communications at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK. The event is funded by the Internationalization Strategy of TU Dresden and the LSE Global Research Fund.

The buzzword “smart borders” commonly captures the widespread digitalization and automation of migration control and the expansion of racial capitalist security regimes by technological means. Yet, the term describes only the most recent instance of media technologies constituting and enabling state bordering. While states around the world rely on and invest in ever newer “smart” technologies to control migration, these developments stand in longer historical continuities, not least hailing from projects of mobility and population control of colonialism, racism, eugenics, or carceral regimes (Chaar-López, 2019; Weitzberg, 2020; Pfeifer, 2021; Leurs & Seuferling, 2022; Tazzioli, 2023).

This conference aims to address the international research field on temporalities and histories of smart borders, to trace genealogies and longue durées of media, communication, and information technologies in the control of borders and migration. Such histories can be traced on different levels: materialities of media technologies, uses and practices around them, struggles against bordering tactics and technologies, as well as socio-technical imaginaries of what these technologies can and cannot do – all of which are characterized by continuities and change. While media shape borders across time, media technologies are also shaped by and emerge from projects of bordering. In this sense, borders can be better understood by attending to their media, and vice versa, media histories more generally can be explored at the border – a “technological testing ground” (Molnar, 2022) historically and today.

Location: TU Dresden, Germany, hosted by the Chair of Digital Cultures
Date: 15–17 November 2023
Format: in-person
Submission deadline: 14 July 2023

Confirmed Keynote: Dr Iván Chaar-López, University of Texas, Austin
Organizing team: Dr Michelle Pfeifer (TUD) and Dr Philipp Seuferling (LSE)