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As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance industries. And when US Immigration Customs Enforcement aggressively reinforced its program of raids, detention, and family separation, it was powered by Silicon Valley corporations. In cities of refuge, where communities on the move once lived in anonymity and proximity to familial and diaspora networks, the possibility for escape is diminishing. As cities rely increasingly on tech companies to develop digital urban infrastructures for accessing information, identification, services, and socioeconomic life at large, they also invite the border to encroach further on migrant communities, networks, and bodies. In this book, Matt Mahmoudi unveils how the unsettling convergence of Silicon Valley logics, austere and xenophobic migration management practices, and racial capitalism has allowed tech companies to close in on the final frontiers of fugitivity--and suggests how we might counteract their machines through our own refusal.
Civic space worldwide is shrinking – nowhere is this plainer than in Palestine–Israel Suppressing Dissent brings together leading experts of shrinking civic space and transnational repression concerning Palestine–Israel to show how failing to address the phenomenon has impacts in the United States, the Middle East and beyond.
Governments now routinely use AI-based software to gather information about citizens and determine the level of privacy a person can enjoy, how far they can travel, what public benefits they may receive, and what they can and cannot say publicly. What input do citizens have in how these machines think? In Political Automation, Eduardo Albrecht explores this question in various domains, including policing, national security, and international peacekeeping. Drawing upon interviews with rights activists, Albrecht examines popular attempts to interact with this novel form of algorithmic governance so far. He then proposes the idea of a Third House, a virtual chamber that legislates exclusively on AI in government decision-making and is based on principles of direct democracy, unlike existing upper and lower houses that are representative. Digital citizens, AI powered replicas of ourselves, would act as our personal emissaries to this Third House. An in-depth look at how political automation impacts the lives of citizens, this book addresses the challenges at the heart of automation in public policy decision-making and offers a way forward.
An examination of the role played by aid, from donors, International Organisations and NGOs, in everyday border and migration control.
Searching for a New Kenya analyses public discussion in urban Kenya, focusing on the gatherings of citizens, both in-person and online, where people discuss issues of common concern to shed light on the role public discussion plays in politics and how social media affects political movements. Through rich ethnographic study of politics on the ground and online in Mombasa, Stephanie Diepeveen brings a fresh perspective on the wider challenges and dynamics of negotiating political narratives across protracted historical debates and changing digital media. Based on a critical revision of Hannah Arendt's ideas about action and power, this study explores the different dynamics of public talk in practice. It contributes to wider debates about the place and limitations of the Western canon in relation to the study of politics elsewhere, while also offering a nuanced view of why and how certain terms of debate persist in Kenya, and where the potential for change lies for public talk across changing media.
Global adoption of the Internet has exploded, yet we are only beginning to understand the Internet's profound political consequences. Authoritarian states are digitally catching up with their democratic counterparts, and both are showing a growing interest in the use of cyber controls--online censorship and surveillance technologies--that allow governments to exercise control over the Internet. Under what conditions does a digitally connected society actually help states target their enemies? Why do repressive governments sometimes shut down the Internet when faced with uprisings? And how have cyber controls become a dependable tool in the weapons arsenal that states use in civil conflict? I...
This book covers the developing field of open source research and discusses how to use social media, satellite imagery, big data analytics, and user-generated content to strengthen human rights research and investigations. The topics are presented in an accessible format through extensive use of images and data visualization.
UN peace operations increasingly deploy police forces and engage in policing tasks. The turn to 'police peacekeeping' has generally been met with enthusiasm in both academic and policy circles, and is often understood to provide a more civilian instrument of intervention, better suited to mandates that increasingly emphasize protection. Rebuilding local police forces along democratic, liberal lines is seen as a prerequisite for a successful transition towards peace and stability. In this book, Lou Pingeot questions this optimistic reading of police peacekeeping, and demonstrates that the logic of policing leads to the depoliticization of conflict and the criminalization of those who are deem...
The border regimes of imperialist states have brutally oppressed migrants throughout the world. To enforce their borders, these states have constructed a new digital fortress with far-reaching and ever-evolving new technologies. This pathbreaking volume exposes these insidious means of surveillance, control, and violence. In the name of “smart” borders, the U.S. and Europe have turned to private companies to develop a neocolonial laboratory now deployed against the Global South, borderlands, and routes of migration. They have established immigrant databases, digital IDs, electronic tracking systems, facial recognition software, data fusion centers, and more, all to more “efficiently”...
Common Sense in Environmental Management examines common sense not in theory, but in practice. Jonathan Woolley argues that common sense as a concept is rooted in English experiences of landscape and land management and examines it ethnographically - unveiling common sense as key to understanding how British nature and public life are transforming in the present day. Common sense encourages English people to tacitly assume that the management of land and other resources should organically converge on a consensus that yields self-evident, practical results. Furthermore, the English then tend to assume that their own position reflects that consensus. Other stakeholders are not seen as having l...