The Walls Have Eyes: Border Tech Conversations with the Migration and Technology Monitor (webinar recording)

In this April 2024 webinar lawyer and author Petra Molnar discusses her new book The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. The book offers a global story of the sharpening of borders through technological experiments while also introducing strategies of togetherness across physical and ideological borders.

From interrogating facial recognition apps at the US/Mexico border to building our psychosocial archives in Ugandan refugee camps, how do we better work together to redistribute resources to mobile communities and how do we make space for expertise stemming from communities-on-the-move? Technology replicated power relations in society and often those with lived experiences of its sharpest edges are relegated to the margins.

Find out more about the book.

Read an earlier report by Petra:

Bots at the Gate: A Human Rights Analysis of Automated Decision Making in Canada’s Immigration and Refugee System
This report focuses on the impacts of automated decision-making in Canada’s immigration and refugee system from a human rights perspective.

Presenters:

Petra Molnar is a lawyer and an anthropologist and the author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (The New Press 2024). Petra has crossed many borders and co-created the Migration and Technology Monitor. She also co-runs the Refugee Law Lab at York University and is a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University

Wael Qarssifi is a journalist from Syria who lived for a long time in Malaysia. His project aims to produce original reporting about the issues of migration and refugees in Asia through diverse journalism mediums. It also seeks to create a factual representation of migrants and refugees in the media and combat disinformation used to spread hate speech towards vulnerable communities.