How does Europe use technology to manage its borders?

This blog piece was written by Olga, a second-year International Relations and Sociology student who joined SolidariTee’s Glasgow team in September 2025.

In it, she explores the role of technology and profit in facilitating Europe’s racialised border outsourcing policies, and what this means for engagement with reparative justice and responsibility.

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Introduction

What comes to mind when you think of technology? Perhaps you think of phones, computers, or other devices which are now part of our everyday lives. Maybe you think of chat-based, generative forms of AI and their increasing presence online. Either way, nobody can deny that modern technology has become embedded in countless corners of our societies. But how do we situate technology in political society and in the context of state power? What role does it play in migration policy, and how does this connect to social, political, and economic inequalities?

From using finger-prints for identification in the West since the 1800s (CDVI UK, 2022), to the use of drones and satellites during WWI, or computers during WWII, governments and organisations have very often used technology to enforce their mandate. However, modern technology has increasingly become a tool of the liberal and Western state’s panopticon of control, shaping our understandings of migration and therefore our attitudes towards it, in turn justifying the harshest of migration policies. Generally understood as a particular form of prison design (originating from the philosopher and social theorist, Jeremy Bentham), the panopticon operates such that a watchman is able to observe occupants or prisoners, who themselves are never fully aware of when they are being observed, as they cannot see this watchman. This has been used by several scholars, such as the French historian and sociologist Michel Foucault, to represent the idea of social control; we internalise such observations, disciplining ourselves and controlling our behaviour (whether willingly or not) when we believe we are being observed, even if no one is observing us.  

Understanding social control in this way helps us understand how migration is securitized. When refugees, migrants, and vulnerable people on the move are portrayed within the media and in political discourse as criminals or people who threaten a country’s sovereignty and identity, this in turn influences our behaviour and reactions towards them. This helps justify, for instance, border externalisation policies and the use of invasive, expensive, and violent technologies to help achieve them. Examples include investing in unpiloted military drones to surveil people’s movement at borders, in turn digitalising the border (Molnar, 2020; Achiume/UN, 2020; Migrants’ Rights Network, n.d.). Border externalisation refers to efforts by governments to outsource their border, adopting policies which prevent people from reaching their borders, and often done through coordination between states, organisations and private entities.

Border externalisation disproportionately targets people from Africa, South Asia, and South and Central America (UN Report, Achiume, 2020, p.15), and technologies used to help enforce this form of border management are racialised. Thus, these policies must be placed in the context of colonial history and neocolonialism (formerly colonial countries which exert social, political or economic pressures on countries which often are former colonies). This will help us understand how European governments have been behaving in relation to migration policy, and how these policies are one way in which they externalise and evade their responsibility to engage in reparative justice.

Reparative justice is a criminological term which refers to an offender repairing the harm they caused victims of crime, as a method of facilitating dialogue. In the context of colonialism, this means addressing and repairing the centuries of harm done to those countries which have been colonized by former European imperial powers (Agozino, 2021). International law recognizes the right of victims of crimes against humanity to claim reparations, and thus the responsibility of states to provide reparations when they seriously violate humanitarian law.

Technology & Border externalisation

Border externalisation or outsourcing refers to a strategy governments adopt in order to prevent refugees and migrants from reaching their own borders, which includes “entrusting part of the control of migration flows to third countries, via financial or material support or police and military assistance” (MSF, 2024). This has also been done through enlisting private entities or organisations. The EU and UK have invested heavily in doing so, especially since the early 2010s (MSF, 2024; Walia, 2020; Molnar, 2020), becoming key to their positions on migration. 

One of the most notable examples of this can be seen in the 2016 EU-Turkey ‘deal’, which aimed to ‘control irregular migration’ from Turkey into the EU. This outsourced refugee protection to Turkish and Greek authorities (Amnesty International, 2024), where all those who entered Greece from Turkey would be forcibly returned to Turkey, in exchange for resettling and admitting individuals from Syria staying in Turkey. The EU committed around 6 billion euros in 2016 and another 3 billion in 2021 to Turkey for this agreement (Amnesty International, 2024), which was stated, in part, to address humanitarian issues faced by refugees in Turkey. However, this has led to refugees and people seeking asylum having been forced to live in inhumane conditions, and Turkey has even illegally deported individuals back to Syria (Amnesty International, 2020). Widely criticised by human rights actors and organisations such as Amnesty International, this has allowed the EU to avoid its responsibility to protect refugees under international law, violating human rights and allowing Turkey to do the same (EuroMed Rights, 2024).

Although technology has become central to migration processes globally (Molnar, 2023, p.308), it has come to play a significant role in facilitating border externalisation. This has manifested in agreements and negotiations with countries in Africa and the Middle East, contracts with the private sector and technology corporations, as well as the development of agencies such as FRONTEX (the EU border and coast guard agency). In practice, this has led to over-reliance on a wide variety of technologies which can and have led to serious breaches of human rights, such as in the form of bias and discrimination, privacy breaches and the sharing of people’s information without their consent, as well as cases of violence (Molnar, 2023; Molnar, 2019). Technologies have aided authorities in illegal push-backs, for instance, which is when people on the move are forcibly displaced across country borders (UN/Achiume, 2020; Augustova, 2023). For example, push-backs from the Maltese border into Italian waters ultimately coordinated push-backs into Libya (Oxford Law Blogs/Smith, 2021). Pushbacks have previously violated the UN principle of non-refoulement, which stresses people’s protection against forcible returns to a country where they can face persecution or danger. 

Former Special Rapporteur Ms. E. Tendayi Achiume highlighted numerous accusations of such human rights breaches under international law, and moreover, that border externalisation disproportionately discriminates against people on the move from Africa, South and Central America, and South Asia (UN/Achiume, 2020, p.15). She highlighted that even the most ‘efficient’ forms of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) algorithms have been found to “misrecognise Black women twenty more times than White men” (Achiume, 2020, p.5). Military drones, cameras and even towers with built-in infrared cameras are just some of the surveillance technologies used by migration authorities in Europe (Molnar, 2020; Achiume, 2020), particularly across the Mediterranean and Aegean seas (Mazzeo, 2021). FRONTEX and EUROSUR (European Border Surveillance System), for example, deploy surveillance drones to notify Libya’s coastguards to “intercept refugee and migrant boats and return Migrants to Libya” (Achiume, 2020, pp.15-16).

Other well-known uses of technology at borders, such as at refugee camps or airports, include biometrics, which are technologies that collect data about an individual’s biological, physiological or behavioural characteristics. This ranges from fingerprint and retina/iris scanning, or lesser-known techniques such as recording one’s ear shape, their unique blood-vessel patterns, or even voice printing technologies which record people’s accents and patterns of speech, and can be used to attempt to track where someone might have come from (Molnar, 2023, p.308; Ozkul, 2023; Molnar, 2020; Walia, 2020; Achiume, 2020). In some cases, refugees have been refused resources or meals unless they provide biometric data (Achiume, 2020/Molnar, 2020). Once people’s biometric data is in the EURODAC system (the EU biometric data system), it effectively prevents people from seeking asylum in multiple countries (School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh, n.d.) and thus ever seeking asylum in another country after a single application. Biometrics are a particularly concerning tool as their use raises questions of consent, arguably at all levels of border systems as, again, such data is often taken without people’s consent (Pugliese, 2022). This is especially true for refugees and people seeking asylum who are more vulnerable at border systems, having little to no control over the data collected from them (Achiume, 2020, p.9) and no support to challenge technological experimentation (Achiume, 2020, pp.13-14). As Achiume (2020) puts it, these methods have “historical antecedents in colonial technologies of racialized governance” (p.3).

The ways in which refugees, people seeking asylum, and indeed the act of migration itself, are represented in the media help justify this; also, in turn, facilitated by technology. Whether through social media platforms, TV, radio or podcast platforms, or in headline news, it gives policymakers and influential figures a platform to portray migration in ways which enhance and build support for their anti-migration policies. For instance, when we have seen influential politicians like Hungary’s Vicktor Orbán describing migrants as a “poison” (whose stance has not changed) (The Guardian, 2016). Or, when Britain’s Nigel Farage continues to describe people seeking asylum as a threat to national security and identity, significantly fuelling anti-migrant discourse more broadly and encouraging violent riots which are grounded in such rhetoric (Venkataramakrishnan, 2025).

These types of technologies have become integral to border management and externalisation policies; they are increasingly utilised not only by Britain and the EU but indeed, western countries more broadly, including the US, Canada, and Australia.

Colonial Legacies and Neocolonial borders

In Chapter 6 of her book, ‘Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism’, Harsha Walia examines Europe’s migration policies by situating them within colonial history, capitalism and the economy, exploring what this means for people on the move. She highlights several agreements made between European and African countries where migration is the centre of the politicking, for example, the Spain-Morocco readmission agreement through which Morocco is obligated to readmit people deported by Spanish authorities (p.139). 

“There are tens of thousands of African migrants and refugees immobilized in Morocco, waiting for months and years to attempt the crossing into Europe. In 2018, the EU approved 148 million euros for an updated EU–Morocco Action Plan to ensure that they cannot enter, and in 2019, Morocco forcibly prevented seventy thousand people from crossing into Spain.” (Walia, 2020, pp.142-143)

Morocco has previously used this agreement as leverage, loosening or restricting the flow of migration at its borders in order to exert influence over international policymaking and secure, for example, beneficial trade agreements (Chireno, 2025; Czarnik et al., 2024). This use of migration as a political tool by Morocco is partly due to the UK and EU’s increasing overreliance on border externalisation; this allows for refugees and people on the move to be inhumanely treated as political bait, taking precedence over their rights to seek safety and support.

Some migration agreements are a result of pressure by European countries on Middle Eastern and especially African countries to accept outsourcing of migratory control in return for trade, development or aid agreements (Walia, 2020, p.139). For example, the Khartoum Process between the EU and AU commissions, established in 2014, is an agreement made to control migration from eastern African countries into Europe, specifically argued to target people smuggling (International Organization for Migration (IOM), n.d.), especially from “Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Sudan” (Walia, 2020, p.139). This was followed by the Valletta Summit in 2015, an agreement which focused on restricting northward migration from Africa into Europe and saw the launch of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. This promised financial support to North African countries who helped address and reduce migration flows (Walia, 2020, p.139; European council website). Some EU countries, like France and Italy, have even deployed and kept their own soldiers in African countries such as in Libya, Niger, Tunisia, and Mali (Walia, 2020, p.140). 

Europe’s borders are considered some of the world’s deadliest for people on the move to reach, in large part due to the lack of available safe and legal routes resulting from its migration policies (Walia, 2020; Augustova, 2023; MSF, 2024). The IOM considers the Mediterranean as the most dangerous to cross; between 2000-2017, 33,000 people died or went missing in attempts to cross it, and 90% of those people were from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and The Gambia (Walia, 2020, p.136). 

Here, Walia reveals Europe’s treatment of migration as an opportunity to “fortify” its reputation as a liberal democratic establishment (p.155) which aims to prioritise the safety and security of its citizens. In reality, European governments do not seek to address the causes of forced displacement, using it as cover up for their shortcomings in domestic policy, and its politicians seem to view migration as no more than a “burden” to be managed (p.160). Indeed, Molnar (2020) highlights that the majority of countries which the EU in particular prioritises for its border externalisation efforts are categorized as authoritarian, “known for human rights abuses” (p.35). We therefore cannot view British and EU migration policies of border externalisation as aiming to uphold international law and human rights when too often they lead to them being violated, and prioritise the political interests of the policymakers who create them.

The Border Industrial Complex 

From the EU’s next upcoming budget period of 2028-2034, it can be seen that it is increasingly investing 15.4 billion Euros on “border management” more generally, as well as 11.9 billion for FRONTEX. (EU, n.d; European commission: Migration and Home Affairs, 2025; UN/Achiume, 2020). The British government continues to have a ‘working arrangement’ with FRONTEX (UK GOV website) despite no longer being an EU member, and the private sector has reportedly received around £3.5 billion in contracts with the British government related to border management policies more broadly (Mayblin, 2025). Therefore, highlighting the role of financial interest within migration policy can give us a glimpse into why extreme migration policies continue to be enforced by European governments.

The Border Industrial Complex is a term increasingly used by scholars and journalists to conceptualize the interactions between “border policing, militarisation and financial interest” (Molnar, 2020, p.36). Because of the extent to which the UK and EU governments now outsource their border management to the private sector, this inevitably requires highlighting the actions of Big Data and technology companies.

For instance, when European countries are supported in their efforts to collect data from people’s phones and ‘scrape’ their social media accounts, which has been found to influence asylum application outcomes (Molnar, 2020, p.18). Or, when governments work with technology companies, using their data tracking & analytics to predict people’s migratory paths and ‘human behaviour’ (Monroy, 2021). Indeed, UN member countries and even some of its organisations are increasingly relying on big data analytics to shape their policies (Achiume, 2020, p.7). The UN World Food programme for instance has a partnership with Palantir: a company accused of facilitating human rights violations committed by US authorities, such as in detention camps (UN/Achiume, 2020, p.5)

As a result of such relations, it is argued that private companies are increasingly “setting the migration control agenda” (Molnar, 2020, p.36). If so, it is no surprise that migration policies therefore steer away from holistically tackling and preventing issues which cause forced displacement, such as war and political persecution, when it is in those same companies and governments’ financial interest to do so. 

“The big corporate players and beneficiaries in the border monitoring service sector are largely Global North military companies, some of which…are the largest arms sellers in the world.” (UN/Achiume, 2020, pp.7-8)

What does this mean for reparative justice?

Reparative justice is about more than simple financial compensation. Rather, it is about the responsibility of addressing the damage that centuries of colonialism have inflicted and continue to inflict on countries formerly subjected to imperial and colonial rule. Moreover, the social, political and economic inequalities which this created and continues to impose on such countries (Otele, 2023; Agozino, 2021). To begin with, responsibility means not economically and politically trapping formerly colonized countries into situations which benefit European countries. It means not exporting arms, not gaining financially from arming non-state actors, and not contributing to cycles of violence abroad which in turn trigger forced displacement. Moreover, it means for migration rights to be respected and upheld, especially the rights of people who are racialised and come from countries that had been colonized by former European colonial powers (Goldstone, 2024).

If policymakers and the private sector are increasingly allowed to enforce their own agendas, without respect for international and humanitarian law, without mechanisms of accountability - reparative justice will remain off the table. What is the likelihood that governments and powerful figures will truly prioritise reparative justice when they profit from systematic inequalities and the policies which create them?

If controlling migration is a historical tactic of those in power and has been a tactic of former empires, then migration will increasingly become an act of resistance, and so too will supporting refugees, people seeking asylum, and migrants more generally. However, this is not what we should aim for. We should not live in a society where migration and solidarity with people on the move become singular or bold acts of resistance; this can happen only where governments have excessive control over people’s movement and violate their right to safety and asylum.

Migration is fundamentally driven by survival, and the types of migration policies European countries enforce are themselves producing human rights violations – a significant driver of forced displacement (Amantini, 2022). Thus, when such policies are adopted, they become empty attempts to address it and instead perpetuate a cycle which helps to obfuscate the obligations that institutions have to support vulnerable communities. This then means the responsibilities of these same institutions to provide reparative justice are similarly obfuscated.

Conclusion/Closing thoughts

Policies based on control, racism and inequalities are not the answer. We need to contextualise migration and understand the issues which cause forced displacement, from war to political persecution. People on the move risk their lives despite knowing the dangers and what it might cost, despite hostile migration policies like those infamously turning Europe into a ‘fortress’.

We should not support policies like border externalisation which securitize migration, disproportionately control and affect racialised bodies, and by extension criminalize the act of their migration and human movement itself. People deserve safety and have the right to be treated with dignity, not exploited as a political tool nor capitalized upon for financial interest.

Moreover, we need to pay attention to the role which technology plays as a tool of control. This means regulating technology and technology companies when they facilitate and exploit hostile migration policies which prioritise financial gain over people. Our institutions, and indeed our societies, cannot decolonize when we continue to use tools and policies which harken back to colonial-era rule.

We have a responsibility to help protect people’s rights to asylum and to seek safety, and this means becoming more politically responsible as individuals and members of communities. It means holding our politicians and policymakers to account, and electing those who curb private sector interests especially when they are at the expense of people’s right to life.

Molnar, 2020/Achiume, 2020: ‘technology is not neutral’, so neither should we be.