Date: 29 March 2023
The (B)OrderS: Centre for the Legal Study of Borders and Migration and the Human Rights Law Centre at Queen Mary University of London invite you to the workshop ‘Towards Autonomous Borders? Assessing the Human Rights and Rule of Law Challenges of the Deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Systems for Migration Management’.
In recent years, the exponential increase in computational power coupled with the availability of large quantities of data has heightened the burst in interest for Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the field of migration, broadly including immigration, asylum and border management, AI has the potential to revolutionise the way states manage mobility, decision-making and community integration. AI promises modernised identity checks and border controls, as well as expedited and more efficient decision-making in relation to applications for visas, residence permits or asylum applications. In immigration systems suffering from backlogs, lengthy delays and uncertain outcomes, the deployment of AI technology appears as a panacea for treating pathogenic practices and promoting neutrality, objectivity and standardisation in decision-making, thus decreasing or restricting cases of individuals subjected to discriminatory treatment. At the same time, the increasing utilisation of AI applications seems to be heading towards the development of highly autonomous borders which can automatically pre-determine one’s right of entry or stay in the country based on their legal status, sophisticated risk assessments and biometric analysis, and limit human intervention to very few highly complex cases. This autonomy may also reinforce existing non-entreé policies and entails significant implications for the protection of human rights, such as the right to respect for private life and protection of personal data, non-discrimination and effective remedies. This workshop aims to critically evaluate these challenges stemming from AI applications in the field of migration management.