New forms of cyber-bordering: When social media becomes the border

About the event

Over the past decade, the EU has positioned itself as one of the world’s toughest regulators of Big Tech. At the same time, EU institutions and Member States have increasingly enlisted those very platforms in the fight against migrant smuggling: monitoring migration routes online, removing content deemed to facilitate irregular migration and targeting prospective migrants with deterrence ads. At the same time, data-driven forecasting is increasingly shaping how displacement is anticipated and humanitarian responses are planned, raising broader questions about the role of data and predictive technologies in migration governance.

What happens when social media becomes part of Europe’s border? Who decides what is taken down, and who is watched? And what does this mean for the rights that EU digital regulation was meant to protect?

In this keynote, Research Fellow Julia Van Dessel (University of Oxford/ULB) presents new research on the digital dimension of EU counter-smuggling policy and introduces the concept of “cyber-bordering”. Afterwards, she will be in conversation with Professor Vasilis Galis (IT University of Copenhagen), who researches migration, policing and digital borders and Alexander Kjærum (Danish Refugee Council), works on data-driven displacement forecasting, to discuss what this shift means for migrants, for platforms and for democratic oversight.

Speakers

Julia van Dessel is a Research Fellow at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and a Wiener-Anspach Postdoctoral Researcher at the Oxford Department of International Development. Her research examines how the EU uses communication and digital information to govern migration beyond its borders. Building on her doctoral research on migration deterrence campaigns in West Africa, her current project investigates how social media data shape migration enforcement, surveillance, and border control.

Vasilis Galis is Professor of Science and Technology Studies in the Technologies in Practice (TIP) group at the IT University of Copenhagen. His research explores the social impacts of digitalisation on policing, migration, borders, and welfare. He has co-led the project DIGINAUTS: Migrants’ Digital Practices in/of the European Border Regime and currently leads Welfare after Digitalization and Critical Understanding of Predictive Policing.

Alexander Kjærum is Global Advisor and Senior Analyst at the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), where he leads work on data-driven humanitarian planning and response. He is the author of DRC’s flagship Global Displacement Forecast report and leads its work on forecasting displacement for anticipatory action. He supports the development of anticipatory action mechanisms for conflict-induced displacement across seven countries.

Ahlam Chemlali is the Co-Director of the Centre for the study of coercion and accountability and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Aalborg University. She researches migration and borders, with a particular focus on European externalisation policies and their political, social and human consequences. Her work examines how Europe governs migration both within and beyond its territorial boundaries, including through partnerships with third countries, the outsourcing of asylum procedures, and external border control mechanisms.

Ida Marie Savio Vammen is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), specialising in the ethnographic study of EU externalisation, border governance, and their impacts on migrants’ lives and decisions. Her fieldwork spans West Africa, Ethiopia, and Argentina, exploring how restrictive policies and humanitarian interventions shape mobility and social dynamics. 

Agenda

16.00-16.05    Welcome, Ida Marie Savio Vammen
16.05-16.30    Keynote: From counter-smuggling to cyber-bordering: Social media surveillance, content moderation, and targeted advertising in EU migration governance, Julia Van Dessel
16.30-17.10    Conversation: New forms of cyber-bordering and resistance, Vasilis Galis and Julia van Dessel, moderated by Ahlam Chemlali
17.10-17.30    Q&A