Mobile phones at borders: logics of deterrence and survival in the Mediterranean Sea and Sonoran Desert

ABSTRACT

Migrant death rates at international borders have risen sharply since the 1980s. Through archival research, we analyze the European Union’s and the United States’ international border infrastructures to illuminate how technological developments may have contributed to this spike in death rates. Based on an analysis of archival materials, we show how the mobile phone has emerged as an inadvertent identification technology at two border sites – the Mediterranean Sea and the Sonoran Desert – and how this technology supports survival in increasingly dangerous border-crossing experiences while also leading to death, detention, and deportation. We find that mobile phones have become identification technologies central to both migrants’ survival and border infrastructures’ attempts to deter cross-border mobility with profound consequences for human life and agency. We conclude with suggestions for future work to investigate reshaping border infrastructures in ways that do not rely on the galvanizing power of false and dangerous narratives of a symbolic Other.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile technology
• surveillance/privacy
• migration
• infrastructure
• social theory

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Aswin Punathambekar, Libby Hemphill, Allegra Fonda-Bonardi, Hillary K. Hecht, Scott Beal, and Jordan Cundiff for their comments on drafts of this article, as well as our anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. Finally, the authors thank those individuals and organizations who work daily to reduce violence at borders, and whose work motivated our research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been partially funded by the University of Michigan School of Information.

Notes on contributors

Angela M. Schöpke-Gonzalez

Angela M. Schöpke-Gonzalez is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information. Angela has expertise as a dance theater artist, writer, and computational scientist. Angela’s work situates the physical body as an integral part of infrastructural systems [email: [email protected]].

Florian Schaub

Florian Schaub is an assistant professor of Information and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on investigating and supporting people’s privacy and security behavior and decision-making in complex socio-technical systems [email: [email protected]].