Data or Razor Wire
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JSONXML
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:17
I'm very happy to welcome Joanna Bonowitska and Rafael Bosong, both from
00:25
the Europa University via Drina from the Center for Internet and Human Rights. And they are posing the question, data eraser wire, what controls migrant bodies? Hello, welcome everyone to this talk, which actually is going to go more as a conversation.
00:44
We are both researchers at the Center for Internet and Human Rights, and we're both academics, and we, I guess, as typical academics, we're both a little neurotic and feel guilty. Rafael is an expert in European security policy, but he told me before this talk that he
01:03
feels a little guilty that he doesn't do enough to further some causes and do more advocacy. Me, on the other hand, I have done a lot of work with migrants in the US, France and Poland, also migrant politics, politics with migrants, but I feel that oftentimes we pick the wrong causes,
01:25
and we don't actually make good use of the academic evidence that there is out there to fight some of the bigger problems. So a lot of the advocacy work is focused on the short-term problems, on alleviating suffering of the migrants, of the plight that we see on television,
01:43
and we come up with short-term fixes and short-term solutions. What we want to talk about today is some of the more larger, long-term systemic problems that we're facing in Europe right now, and that potentially influence not only the refugees, but first all of the non-EU citizens that are traveling to Europe.
02:07
You can think about all of the non-EU citizens that are at this conference, that they were subject of what we're going to be talking about, and potentially in the future maybe even all EU citizens. So we're going to have this conversation, and I guess the first question I would like to talk about,
02:25
this is the famous world press photo that won this year. It shows this very brave act of crossing the border. This is the Hungarian border right before it was permanently sealed. So this is the more temporary razor wire, and it was being replaced with more permanent walls.
02:48
So the first question I have for you, Rafael, is the title of the talk. The title of the talk is Data or Razor Wire. So you're putting them somehow as two means that the EU is trying to use to build what is often called by the activists as the fortress Europe.
03:07
Does it mean that the borders, that the physical borders are obsolete, that they no longer matter? So yeah, we always start with a punchline, so we lured you into the room with an or question, but the real answer is of course it's neither or, but it's both.
03:23
And the whole point really is to understand how those both elements, razor wire and data or data wire, play together. So yes, I mean that's really what's mediatized, and Joanna gave a great introduction to that, and that's what people mostly sort of focus on the first run, and that's not wrong.
03:42
I mean obviously things have changed in the last year quite dramatically so. I mean, just as a recall, I will be very short on this. This is kind of summary, lifted straight from Wikipedia, about the migration movements last year and the asylum claims. Obviously you see the famous sort of Balkan route and coming to Austria, Hungary, Germany mostly, and also from this Mediterranean before.
04:04
And lo and behold, in response to that, of course, you have this what is also very much mediatized, the construction of new razor wire fences, the one in Hungary which we saw the pictures of, but here every blue line is a new sort of wire fence, here is the Kalei jungle,
04:21
and then you have the red lines with increased police patrols, so I mean that's what people are talking about, like is Schengen coming to an end, is freedom of movement coming to an end, and there is no shortage of dramatic pictures of course, I mean this is also from Hungary, as it's being constructed, people being hemmed in in these kind of camps, and you have of course all the kind of scenes in Idomene, so yeah, I mean there is razor wire fences are back,
04:45
and it's symbolic, it's important, and it really can mean a lot to freedom of movement. However, it's also to say that of course none of this in a way is principally new, so last year, yeah, was a real new stage or a new dramatic element in the crisis,
05:00
but if you want to have dramatic fences, then for those of you working on migration in Europe, this is more long-term infamous example of Ceuta Mejia, those two enclaves here at the top of North Africa, which belong to Spain, and because of that a lot of migrants from Africa are trying to get in there,
05:20
and then claim asylum in Spanish territory while being still in Africa, and that has led to this kind of arms race, like by now a triple fence with multiple obstacles in between, I'll come back to that, and regular storming of it, and people get caught and all of that. And if that fails, of course, I don't need to remind you, there is the other physical obstacle and bridge,
05:44
namely the Mediterranean, if people don't make it over the fence, they go back to the boats, and that's what people discuss now, that if we don't have the Balkan route anymore, we'll have renewed activities from Libya, and Libya not being a stable state nowadays is of course very difficult to control the situation there, if you want to control it,
06:02
and here is another symbolic picture of last year, the year before the tragic Lampedusa disaster with 800 dead, so whatever follows, I mean the point here is not to kind of pile up one stereotype of the media after the other, one iconic picture after the other, but really to underline that if we now in this following talk more about data and databases,
06:23
it's not to say that this doesn't matter, of course this still dramatically matters, and really this is where people risk their lives, but we also have to look beyond that and think that and something else, and so here… So my question is, okay, let's put ourselves in the shoes of a migrant, let's say from Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria,
06:46
that did cross, let's say before the Balkan route was temporarily opened, because that's what we were really talking about last year, there was temporarily opened, but before many people came through Italy, Greece or Bulgaria, and we know of a lot of reports of people that have traveled thousands and thousands of kilometers
07:05
and spent thousands and thousands of dollars and actually managed to cross the border, managed to jump the fence, cross the sea, but at the post where they were immediately arrested and detained after crossing the border, and they said, okay, I want to claim asylum in European Union,
07:22
they were asked to provide their fingerprints, and many, many of them refused, and what happened is that many of them experienced beatings from the side of police or border guards, there are even some reports of other forms of physical violence or psychological violence,
07:43
so my question is, why would somebody who's put such a high price already to cross the fence fight so hard and refuse to give their fingerprints to the authorities? Well, here's where the European system of asylum comes in,
08:00
and to those of you who know it, then maybe just rehearsal, but just to get the basics out again, of course there's something called Dublin in force, by now it's called the Dublin Three Regime, so there's various iterations, which is supposed to regulate the responsibility of one of the European member states for asylum, so one member state should be responsible for one asylum claim,
08:21
rather than one asylum seeker could be placing asylum requests in different countries, or the reverse, no country in Europe would find itself responsible, say it's not our business, so Dublin supposedly regulates that, and to make that system work, to say which state is actually responsible for giving protection,
08:40
and to receiving and treating these migrants, that's where the kind of registration and the data comes in, and this is why it becomes so crucial, where, how, and what means people are registered, entered into databases, and then shared. So to give you just this image, I mean, one could go on long-term, how Dublin works in detail,
09:01
but this is a recent flow chart, comes actually from the House of Commons in the UK, but it doesn't matter, it still gives kind of the European picture, what is supposed to happen right now, in the kind of hotspots where, you know, Europe tries to take on asylum seekers coming from Turkey, and then you see they come here, and they're supposed to be registered,
09:22
and then after that registration, a lot of steps happen, which member state is responsible, if the person gets, refuses to be registered, they may be detained, forced may be used, they may be deported right away, or they may be deported up until, you know, when the member states determine that they're not responsible and so on and so forth. So all of that sequence, you know, somewhere down here is where you actually get protection.
09:46
All those steps crucially depend on registration, processing of data, sharing of data, moving people between countries based on this kind of data. But what I want to notice, make you realize, is that this part of the graph,
10:01
this is the giving of the fingerprints. What happens here is return, is deportation. If you refuse, this is refusal, the only option is to be sent back home. And all this complicated scheme is asylum procedure. But let's not kid ourselves. The European Commissioner for Migration, a Greek commissioner,
10:26
said that fingerprinting procedures are important mainly for the return procedures. And not so much, he said, and potentially for the asylum procedures. So this is also an important thing to realize, that right now a lot of these people
10:41
are being fingerprinted as part of the asylum procedures, but in a year or two or three year times where their asylum claims are finally processed, the main goal of having these fingerprints in databases is going to be to prevent them from applying for asylum again and facilitating their return to their home countries.
11:01
So to add on this, depending on where you stand and where you come from, and I'm more the academic, it's to underline that this registration, and this is just for asylum, we'll come to other aspects later, has multiple purposes and multiple reasons. So depending on what your interest is and what time frame you're looking at, of course there are also reasons for the protection,
11:23
like to determine the responsible member state or to really identify somebody. Many times people don't have documents and so on. So these systems can also be used for the purpose of protection. And for example, the UNHCR also now starts using fingerprinting registration and with refugee camps in the Middle East.
11:41
But it can also be used for various other purposes, such as then really being clear, okay, this person has to be deported, this person has no right to be in this member state, and supposedly sort of speeding up the administrative processes. So it really all depends on how you use these systems, and that's what we're going to also develop in other respects.
12:00
But this basically explains why, you know, even if you make all those travel hazardous journeys, the real business only starts then, and this is why it becomes such a crucial game. But, you know, the title of the talk is migrants. So, you know, refugees are, and asylum seekers are, of course,
12:21
the most vulnerable and the ones that really deserve most support. But to give you the bigger picture, of course, it's not the only issue we're talking about, and it's not the only database we're talking about. So what we mentioned so far was EuroDAC, which is where people should be registering when they look for asylum, with their personal data and their fingerprints,
12:41
and there's different categories of data in EuroDAC, A, for the registered asylum seekers, but also for other people who are apprehended crossing borders illegally, and then subsequently that should help for those decisions that we just talked about. But then there are two other centralized databases from the EU that are also important for migration and resident status. The first one is the Schengen Information System,
13:03
which is the oldest one being constructed since the 80s. By now it's the Schengen Information System 2. At the moment it's still not biometric, it's still only with data about persons and names, and information about documents or vehicles that are being searched. But very soon, it's already been planned for a long time, it should also include biometric information,
13:21
namely fingerprints or photographs, and in general it's a tool that should help police and border guards across Europe to identify people, execute decisions, like somebody has an entry ban or has a deportation order, and they should be able to, oh right, this is this person, even if they move to a different European country, and on that basis I can actually grab the person and put him on a plane.
13:43
So in that sense, depending on how you interpret it, this is just as much important for the chances of a person, regular or irregular, to stay in the territory and make a life there. But if you want to put a positive spin on it, some people say, well the system can also be used to find missing persons.
14:01
We had news about a lot of migrants that get lost in the registration process, nobody knows where they are now, and then you could enter this information in there and try and trace them. But so far that remains rather speculative. And finally, there was a big centralized database, this is the visa information system, that is for all sorts of other categories of migrants,
14:22
but let's not forget that even for asylum seekers or people in need of protection, it might actually be a good route if it was relatively accessible to come with a normal visa. This is often discussed, why don't we give humanitarian visas or other ways of legal access so that people don't have to take this hazardous journey. So if you want to apply for a visa in the European Union,
14:43
now all this information is in this database and this database has grown over time in terms of the depth of data that's in there, the range of authorities that can access to it. Just to give an example, all of the non-EU speakers are in this database and as you say there's data about visa sponsors, so in that database there's data about this conference
15:04
and everybody who sponsored somebody to come here. So again, it's supposed to help finding the right people and making a legitimate visa, but for example this data about sponsors, police can or may use it for trying to find fake sponsors,
15:21
or they say, or human traffickers. Again, depending on your reading, you can see this as a positive tool or as a tool to control people like, for example, helpers who want to get people into the country on a safer basis than crossing the wire fences. And increasingly this visa information system also includes all fingerprints. This has been a roll out of the geography over time
15:42
and now most countries that have to have a visa for the EU also need to give their fingerprints. So in that sense, just to give you an illustration how that actually looks like. This is not my own slide, this comes from the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consultancy Group, so this is kind of also some business behind it. You know, this is how it works,
16:01
you're in this visa information system, you go to the consulates and it's supposed to have this central database that checks all this information, but it also goes back not only to the immigration authorities like the border guard that actually controls you when you enter with a visa, but it can also go to the law enforcement authorities or Europol, and so it's a multiple purpose system
16:22
that you can have different opinions about whether it's legitimate or not to treat this information as also something for law enforcement purposes. But, you know, I'm throwing out kind of facts, I just want to set out the sort of context. Now we talked about three databases, so visa information system, Schengen information system, EuroDAC,
16:43
these are the three main centralized European databases, but that's not all to it. I won't have time and it doesn't make sense now to run through all of them in detail, but the European Union in general or General International Security Corporation is based on information exchange.
17:02
There is really little, there is no European policeman or there is no European force that can do it directly with certain circumstances. It's really based on sharing and pooling information when they say they do something in this field. And so this explains why you have an accumulation of different actors and groups like about DNA exchange you can do nowadays,
17:22
you can exchange criminal records, you have sort of pooled information files in Europol, you have pooled information about risks and Frontex. You're supposed to have an entry-exit system now very soon, so that means that not only you get stamped or registered when you come into the European Union, but also when you exit.
17:41
And so people would be tracked more clearly in their movements and now you also should have soon, it's agreed on politically, a system for registering plane flight data into and out of the EU. The US is already doing this for a long time, the EU is following suit. So all this kind of stuff together, which I'm happy to take questions if you want to,
18:01
goes together in this idea of integrated border management, integrated intelligence-led policing. And behind that there is still a lot of national databases. Again, another layer of complexity we can't talk about now, but you have to recognize that every single member state has at least five or six or ten databases
18:20
that do similar things and that are connected with these systems in various different ways. So when you come to that, then you start realizing that, you know, it's not like big brother evil conspiracy, but there is really a very complex, very comprehensive infrastructure in place that sort of tries to collect as much data about migrants,
18:42
asylum seekers and other categories of migrants and uses it for multiple purposes. And these multiple purposes can be having very important long-term effects. The last element in there is beyond sort of individual data on persons, is the kind of general situational awareness where more geographical information comes in.
19:02
And maybe some of you heard of this idea about Eurosur. It's still a work in progress and it's not everything seamlessly integrated. But the idea is, yeah, that, you know, hey, we can't build everywhere a wire fence. We can't build everywhere new borders like in the south of this kind of enclaves in Spain. So what we have to do is monitor the whole space
19:23
of European borders, mainly the Mediterranean, but also other spaces. And we do this with satellites, with drones, with other sorts of sensors, and all that should be pooled in big kind of situation centers in Frontex, but also national border guards. And so taken together, you would have this individual data and the situational data of, you know,
19:42
covering the borders in electronics of sort of permanent surveillance state with various forms of censoring. And that's where, you know, a modern contemporary border in European integrated border management would really look like. Looks like a very scary picture to me. But in more of the activist circles,
20:03
there's often this almost dichotomy between people that say that there should be no borders and then the people in the EU that say that we should put more and more resources to create this more complex systems of controlling irregular migrations.
20:22
But do we actually have any evidence that borders work? Do we know if they can stop the flow of what, at least from the perspective of EU authorities, is considered irregular migration? Well, yeah, I mean, this is not only one million, but whatever, one billion euro question or even more.
20:42
And this is where my academic side comes out. So, you know, if you were an activist, you'd see this all as highly problematic and we'll come to that also a bit later once again. But the evidence to say that this is actually controlling migration is very hard to determine. And this is a number of reasons.
21:00
I mean, the reason is that, you know, we really, on the one hand, we have, sorry, I'll now skip a little bit the standard PowerPoint. You know, if you see this, of course you realize that migration is still happening quite extensively and people are taking a lot of risks to do that. But beyond this kind of willingness to take risks and go against this various registration systems,
21:23
it's also very hard to know, of course, you know, what is the real extent of people who come legally and then don't leave when they're supposed to be? What is really the extent of smuggling that we don't see, even if we try to do all these things and these systems don't work all the time? I mean, don't let yourself be kidded by all those nice PowerPoint slides
21:41
and technological projects. It's really not there in the sense that we have a 24-7 perfect minute resolution picture that is running all the time. That's where they want to go to, but we're far from it. And so in that sense, we can't say that, you know, all of that really stops vast amounts of migrants.
22:01
The volumes remain very high, but the risks people are ready to take and the problems they encounter on this process nevertheless are raised. And so in that sense, you could sort of set it against not it's completely blocking them off, but it's making their life a lot more difficult. And if you want to see it as a summary, again, we won't have time to talk about every single point,
22:23
but here we could see this as a logical step, you know, what now the obstacles are, even if people are still doing it. It's not one borderline here, but it's the borderlines before in the visa and the country of origin and the countries of transit and then in the border zone after the actual border, then later controls, later registration
22:41
and later when you move further. So all of those steps are intervention points for those databases and those data gathering exercises. And so it becomes very hard to come from this stage where you're the dangerous stranger and maybe you'll make it to the recognized migrant or asylum seekers, but where we are here, you know, as the privileged group of the trusted citizens
23:01
and travelers going around conferences, that's a very long way to go. And so here really the question comes, is that fair, is that how we want to see things going? And if you want to have a create sort of dystopian image, again, I said Europe is not that far and there's a lot of work in progress,
23:22
so please sort of keep this back in mind. This is how you could sort of think of it as a long-term project. So it's, as we said in the beginning, it's not fences versus databases, it's all together. So we have the fences. This is actually the fence in Spain, which we see before in the schematic form. So it's three fences with lots of sensors
23:43
and pre-obstacles, so complex fences with sensors. Then you have so-called smart borders, which are these automated control gates, which maybe some of you are increasingly encountering at airports where you have to register with prints or with other forms of biometric information, a lot of data when you book your travel tickets.
24:02
So that, and then you have this kind of thing about sort of virtual borders, as they're called in the US, where you have this kind of remote sensing, sensor integration. The US is trying to do this also in Mexico and Arizona. And so you have to think all of this together as the long-term direction of where a lot of interests
24:21
politically and also economically are going. And this is what the US is doing already. So if you fly into the US and you've had this kind of travel authorization, then this is the internal slides, how you would be checked against various databases, whether you are on the no-fly list or on the fly list and so on and so forth.
24:40
So, yeah, I mean, they have the process. I'm not going to comment on it. And as I said, Europe is not quite that far, but just to give you a perspective of where we might be going. Just because we have time for a last question, I really want to ask you something that I think every activist would like to know.
25:00
Okay, what do we do not to get there? Should we resist this change? And if yes, how do we resist? Well, we use this kind of picture here. It's a bit of a cheap shot, admittedly. Those of you who are German in the room maybe know the Center for Political Beauty.
25:22
And like a year or a year and a half ago, they had this kind of stunt or action where they collectively moved to the Bulgarian border and with wire cutter, like Berlin hipster, trying to kind of, you know, let's have no borders and let's get people come to Europe. And yeah, I mean, it's not like this is a bad thing and it's also reached a lot of attention.
25:42
But obviously, when you see this bigger picture, then just trying to cut some wire, like some wire fence in Bulgaria doesn't seem really to hit the mark. And I think that can be only one component if you are an activist for more open borders.
26:01
And so we really need to think beyond that. So how do we start this conversation? Are we stuck in this false dichotomy between the state security and the human rights? What do you think? How can we advance this debate?
26:20
Well, again, you know, me as the academic, I always restrain myself a little bit saying it's all evil or it's all good. There are, as is indicated with EuroDuck, some possible positive uses for, you know, registering people right, treating them right, treating them with dignity when their fingerprints are taken, giving them adequate protection.
26:41
And sometimes it can really help. In Germany, we have this debate about mistaken registration. People don't get asylum claims in time. They don't get the benefits and all that. So yes, this has to be cleaned up and this can help. At the same time, we have to, so we can't just categorically denounce all those systems, but we have to be very careful how they're used,
27:02
for what purpose. Is it really just security purposes that they're going to be using for or are there also some other kind of administrative questions or, you know, dignity questions that are going to be more prioritized? And here we get into details where a lot of critical questions still needs to be done. We're both involved in a project that, you know,
27:22
serves a bit of the background to this talk. And it's actually quite hard to find people who can comment on this at a detail level. You know, people have general views about asylum or general views about Dublin or things like that. But to kind of, when it comes to more specific issues about, okay, so how do you treat people in this process?
27:40
How do you know that the data is used for this purpose and not for that purpose? How do you know that the security services are doing it under the rules that they're supposed to be doing it? Then there is a very, very small percentage of actors that can actually credibly comment on this. Yeah, I also think that one of the biggest challenges for researchers and for advocacy group is to actually listening more carefully
28:01
to the stories that migrants are saying, to reaching them and listening. I think Saskia Sassen mentioned that in her talk that we could learn a lot about the reasons why people migrate. We could also learn a lot about what are the kind of mechanisms that people, that encourage or discourage people from,
28:20
to migrate if we actually reach and talk to them. So I think that's a big challenge for all of us and maybe we have time for one question, no? But well, anyways, I invite you to follow this debate because I think that's going to be one of the most important things on the research agenda for the next couple of years and thank you very much. And if you have any questions, join us afterwards.
28:42
Thank you very much. Thanks a lot.