The Role of ICTs in the Maintenance and Reproduction of Digital Border Assemblages

In this paper, we extend the Digital Border Assemblages framework (DBA) by locating the role of ICTs in enabling means of racialized control at geographical boundaries or borders. Applying a critical-interpretive approach, we identify key features of DBA that contribute to such racial formations. We analyze three case studies of border technologies deployed at and beyond physical sites of border control: electronic device inspections, electronic location monitoring, and restricted transactions in financial technologies. Although a framework of DBA exists in the current paradigm of border studies, we argue that a close examination of the entanglements between borders and ICTs offers us key insights into how migrant bodies are subjected to racialized control at/by the border. Implications for HCI researchers include studying the experiences of those impacted by this assemblage and developing methods inspired by the legal field for studying these obscure systems.