In a world obsessed with AI, what are robo-dogs and how are they deployed at border control? With the rise of “crimmigration” across the world, the lines between migration management and criminal law are becoming blurred. The rise of "crimmigration" on a global scale is seeing the lines between migration management and criminal law being blurred, often in an effort to exercise surveillance of people on the move. What does this mean for people at the border? Can border technologies be used for good?

In a world obsessed with artificial intelligence, why have private sector interests and the growing border industrial complex set the stage for new innovations?

Looking at the UK and North America, we examine new legislation and how they can fail to address the high-risk impacts of using technologies for border security and national security purposes to assist in detecting, identifying, apprehending, and removing individuals who are entering illegally. We examine how AI used at the border intersects with racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, and question if the COVID-19 pandemic has normalised widespread surveillance through data collection and movement tracking.

In this episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast, we welcome Petra Molnar, Harvard Faculty Associate, lawyer, anthropologist, and author of the forthcoming book The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence; and Dr Peter Walsh, Senior Researcher at The Migration Observatory and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford. We explore how border technologies impact every aspect of migration – from robo-dogs and DNA collection, to algorithms and iris recognition – to reveal the human issues beyond the digital frontier.