Louis Everuss's Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders

Here at The Sociology of Everything Podcasts, we acknowledge the people of Ghana Yarta, whose land this episode was mainly produced on, and whose past and present elders repair respects to. Hi, I'm Eric Sue, and I'm Louis Everath. And we're Lou and the Sue, and this is The Sociology of Everything Podcast, the podcast that sometimes engages in shameless self-promotion. Particularly though. Yeah, we are, and you've read the episode title. We're going to be talking about the book of yours, Louie, that's just been released. Super exciting stuff. Well, I suppose it was a little bit ago now, so light June, early July. Conflies. Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's what we tell ourselves in the fact that we don't get the episodes we want to get produced out. But yeah, this book is not quite hot off the presses. But it's newly released in some respects, and what is it about? Why should people part with their hard-earned money to buy this amazing, fantastic, wonderful book? Yeah, well, I suppose we should start by saying that our critical distance from this book is maybe not as great as our critical distance from our books, because yes, it is the book that I wrote, called Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders, our digital technology's transform migration sovereign borders. Quite a mouthful. Who published this? DeGroiter. And I should also mention that there is a pro-night code for our listeners today. If you go to the DeGroiter website and we'll have a link in our description and you put in the code DG Mobility, so you can get a sweet 20% off. 20% off here. Yeah, well, but yeah, why should you care about it? Well, I suppose I can tell you why I care about it, and I care about it because borders and the borders of sovereign states, normally we think of them as countries, is an important thing for sociologists, because we're always fascinated by how social institutions and structures influence the communities and influence our societies and influence us as individuals, and I think there are very few social structures that are as prominent and powerful as the border of the country. The border of the sovereign state. Yeah, I mean, the fact that a border exists, the fact that we have to encounter and negotiate borders in socially variable ways, is one of the most consequential parts of our lives. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you think about it, it also plays such a massive role in how we think about ourselves. One of the first things we'll say to anyone, when we define who we are, we'll say we're Australian. Or you might say. Yeah, I just say it's complicated. But part of what we're saying is that we exist within this national community, surrounded by a sovereign border. So these borders are the lines or the boundaries that separate off what we often think of as the sort of natural communities of the globe. All of this has been challenged in very fundamental ways, but in terms of just common everyday discussion, borders are seen as one of the most important and fundamental political institutions and structures in the entire world. Yeah, I think about how much blood has been spilled, right? Absolutely. For certain borders to be maintained, think of all the worry and heartache and concern people have expressed, experienced, because they have been able to cross a border or they haven't been able to cross a border or they've been forced across a border. Yeah. And, you know, we'll go over this a little bit today and there's obviously a big difference between privileged travelers and people who don't have much power, kind of low motility travelers who might think of them. But for many people, crossing a border can literally be the difference between life and death. Yeah. And then for other people, it can be a joyous experience for a holiday or something else. So are you telling me, Louis, that this book is about. Yeah, there are not someone who experiences happiness or literally death. This book is a matter of life or death. Probably not. This book is about something, which is a matter of life and death. Okay. All right. But, yeah. But in particular, this book is looking at one of the big changes that's currently happening to. I refer to them as sovereign borders and you can describe what that is in a second. And that change is their digitization or digital transformation. And that is essentially the way that all these new digital technologies from kind of passports with chips in them, to algorithmic assessment systems, to drones, to. Yeah. All of the digital technologies that are now being used at the border. Yeah. So, too long didn't read version of what you just said. Something's happening to the border or to borders around the world. And this has something to do with technological changes. Yes. That's right. Exactly right. And I think one other thing I should mention before we get into the kind of some of the key arguments in the book is borders are understood and defined in different ways. Yeah. The way I frame borders in this book is seeing the border not as a static structure that you can understand by looking at a map. Okay. But seeing the border as a relationship. It's produced when a sovereign authority, a government may be represented by a particular border guard or immigration officer or police officer. When they decide whether someone, typically a traveler, should be allowed into the community or should be excluded from the community. Okay. So, it's a relationship. It's not an abstract structure. It's something that has to be performed. Yeah. Well, interestingly enough, if you hear accounts of astronauts, when they look at the earth, they're struck sometimes by the fact that those country lines, those borders don't objectivically and just physically exist. I mean, yes, there are some signs in which you can detect the institution of some borders as we'll go and cover in the rest of the episode. But yeah, the focus on relationality seems to be a very sociological approach to understanding borders. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, well, the way I understand borders drawn heavily on the work of George E.O. Garben, an Italian philosopher who's written a lot about sovereignty and political authority and exclusion, there's a lot that's also problematic about a Garben's work. Hopefully, we'll do an episode on it at some point. You're not Italian, is Cam? No. No, I'm not. But he defines political authority or sovereignty as the ability of a power to essentially perform the border and to decide who gets into the political community and who doesn't. Yeah. Everything else, the social contract, defining what laws should apply, you know, actually managing a population, that comes after you do the first thing and that's the side who's in and who's out. Yeah. You're a political community first and then you decide how to manage that political community and create laws and everything else. Yeah. And so for me, borders exist where this occurs. And like you said, if we think about traditional boundaries, well, there are some borders that are on maps that are really enforced anymore, they even still a border, you know, there are some aspects of the way government's function where they reach out to populations that are well beyond their border and still influence them in some way. Yeah. How does that work within this geographical, mapped idea of the world? So there are all sorts of aspects to political relations that don't fit that neat geography of kind of traditional what we might as well as Westphalian borders. Oh, no. Presumably, your book isn't just about defining borders in a sociological way. No. What are some of its main arguments? Well, essentially, the main arguments of the book are looking at the different ways digital technologies are altering this structure and some of the political and social implications of it. And so for instance, one thing that I look at in the book is how digital technologies are changing the spatiality and temporality of the borders, ultimately where and when borders exist. Okay. And the where is probably a good starting point because if you think, and we're kind of talking about it already, about where borders exist, you might automatically think, oh, the edge of a country on a map. And there are some traditional border technologies that kind of reinforce that at the risk of getting a Trump impression. That's you're going to get it no matter what, it's just going to happen. One of the most traditional border technologies is a wall. We're going to build a beautiful wall. And potentially a logical place to put a wall is on the boundary of your kind of sovereign territory, like the US-Mexico border, where you can perform that sovereign decision, decide whether someone should be included or excluded as they cross that outer threshold of your sovereign territory. So that sort of makes sense, right? But then another technology that's shaped where the border exists are the kind of suite of new mobility technologies like plane travel and train travel and all the technologies that surround these forms of international movement. And I would suggest that they changed where the border exists because they moved that relationship deciding whether people could be included or excluded from the external boundary to this new internal location and airport. Because where do you actually experience the border when you travel? Yeah, this is something we covered in our previous episode when we did an episode on Luiz Amores, biometric borders. You don't experience the border or you don't experience the immigration process right when you cross international boundaries. It usually happens at an airport when you're deploying and you're blurry-died in some cases. And yeah, it happens there. And so we can see how the border has moved in response to new technologies being incorporated into the border. So what I'm interested in is as new digital technologies are included in the border, how is that once again changing where the border exists? Yeah. And I think there are really two aspects to this. One of them is looking at where is all that infrastructure and all of the actants, all of the things that contribute to the border decision, where's that physically located? And where is it located? There's data centers scattered all over the place that hold all of the information that's used to help determine whether someone's a threat or not. I mean, they're literally bordering personnel that sit in different spaces that are far away from any travelers. I mean, one good example of this is the National Targeting Center in Sterling, Virginia, in the US. Exactly, exactly. Where customs and border protection centers their national targeting system, which is essentially the system that assigns risk scores to travelers. And it's fascinating because there's this building there where there are these offices, with badges, wearing all the official uniform, you look like they're about, you know, all they look like they're about to check someone's passport, but they're not actually interacting with everyone. They're just looking at computer screens and assessing whether people are threats and then sending off messages based on that. But this is now a primary site of the US border and it is a typical site of the modern digitized border. And it presumably wouldn't have existed in previous historic guerras, not epochs, right? Exactly right. Imagine this happening like 600 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, answer something. Someone's sitting there waiting for letters to come in from the border. Someone's been assigned a risk score of, you know, whatever else, you know. Yeah. Get this letter back to them quickly. It's Luke. It's Luke. So it's very much of this era. Absolutely. And another part of the modern spatial formation of the border, which is really quite new, is how mobile the border is, how it moves across space. Yeah. The borders have always moved to some extent, I would argue, because if we think about a border patrol, people, you know, walking along the border, trying to find travelers and, you know, decide whether they should be in and out. Yeah. They carry the border with them, I would suggest, because the borders perform by that relationship they establish. But now the border moves to a greater extent in a quicker fashion and more often than ever before, because every time someone applies for a visa when they're still at home, every time someone's risk assessed before they arrive at a border, that is essentially the relationship being established and the border reaching out and bordering all these people no matter where they are in the world. Yeah. And that is completely enabled by all these modern digital technologies. Yeah. And in fact, furthermore, the border follows people as they move, because as you travel towards a state, there are these back end systems doing what's referred to as advanced passenger processing on you. Okay. So when you go to board your plane, there's a chance that the country you're travelling towards will send a message to the airline employees in the airport and give them a do not board notice. Oh. Okay. And that's based on whether you've been assessed as a threat. And then while you're travelling through the air, often more assessments will be going on. And when you arrive and go through a smart gate in an airport, the outcomes of those assessments occur. And it doesn't stop there, because then there's more. But wait. There's more. You're still being bothered. Yeah. It's a lie, a sovereign territory, you think, great, I've crossed the border, it's all done, it's all, you know, it's over. I'm in. Well, no, because in many places now, as you move around, you can still be assessed and boarded. If you're in certain countries, they're like, they're a smart camera set up. That might clock you. And then run background checks on who you are and your migration status. That's a former bordering. Yeah. In the UK, there are mobile fingerprint scanners that police carry around. And that they can check migration databases as well as criminal databases. It's a former bordering. Yeah. And so the border follows you as you move around internal spaces. It's hypermobile. It's reaching out to people all the time and then it's following people internally. Yeah. So what you're describing to me then is like the spatiality of borders has in some ways dramatically transformed in recent years because of technological transformations. But it's more than that, the when, the temporality of borders also seems to have shifted in what ways? Absolutely. And I'll mention Louise more now because she has also picked up a lot of this. And I'm not the only one that quite a few people have picked up on some of this. So are you telling me that in this book, Louis, are not the collection of your insightful brilliant thoughts that you alone in a vacuum developed? That is very true. Okay. I'm shocked. I'm shocked. This is a work of genius. I'm going to brush over the argument in this podcast because we just don't have time to delve into it. But no, my book is a summary of a lot of work that's occurred in this space, along with some of my own insights as well. So go to the book to find the references and all the people. I should be shouting out, I'm not. But yeah, the temporality of the border, when it exists, yeah, because another thing about the border following you as you enter a country or enter a sovereign state, is that the border process doesn't really finish, you know, it used to be the case where once you got past the border guard, or you know, if we're going way, way back, you know, once you climbed over the border wall, we're going to climb over this beautiful wall. Once you're in, you're in to some extent, sure if you happen to like run foul of the law and then, you know, your migration status is checked. But for the most part, you know, the border process had a timeframe that was pretty largely located to that process of going through migration, passing through customs or whatever, whereas now as you're digitally tracked and monitored and your behavior is used to build profiles and continue to border you, the temporality of the border stretch, the timeframe of it rather is stretched out. So it's another really interesting novel part of the digitization of sovereign borders. Another argument that you advance in this book is that the bordering process is not just retrospective, there's a future oriented element to how borders are constituted. What does that mean? Well, if we think about what's actually being assessed when that sovereign decision is being performed, historically, it's mainly focused on the contemporary setting, what's happening right now? Are you a threat right now or your past? I mean, that essentially happens when criminal databases are searched to see if you've committed any crimes. Have you done anything in the past that would make you ineligible? Yeah. So it's like when you declared to an authority that you haven't committed any crimes before or you haven't been refused to visa. Exactly. Your past is being checked, whereas now, and we'll get into this in a bit with quite a lot of the algorithmic systems that are involved in borders, they're also really focused on the future because what they do is they try and predict whether you're a type of person who potentially could be involved in bad behavior in the future. Yeah. I think one of the most striking examples of this, it hasn't actually been incorporated into borders as yet, but in the US. So they had a system that was in development called the future attribute screening technology project or fast. Okay. And what this project was being developed to do was to create a whole way that travels and walk through. And as they walk through their biometrics would be scanned, their heart rate, puke size, breathing patterns, this sort of stuff. And then based on this and other aspects of their profile, the system would decide whether they harbored malintent towards the US or they matched a profile that harbored malintent and was all about predicting whether they may do something bad in the future. And some of the kind of scholarly criticism of this said it was very minority reporting. It did a bit of future crime sort of stuff going on there. I mean, ultimately, a lot of the algorithmic systems where a deviant profile is constructed and the people are matched against it is about predicting whether someone's likely to misbehave in the future. Yeah. So it's a very future orientation. So what else does your book argue, Chloe? So that's an interesting introduction to what your book's about. What else do you have to say? Well, I think another thing that I touch upon in the book, and in fact, something that we have written on together is one. Brilliant. Yeah, that's right. If we're going to sell for my, you know, I'm not going to bring you in. Exactly. Yeah. In fact, someone even say that this chapter for far exceeded the brilliance of this work, but that's what people are just telling me, that's what people are saying. The revert chapter, we've sue on the, as a second order, that's right. Well, that chapter that we both worked on and the chapter from a book that shares similarities with is all about the increasing role of digital identities of the border, because so many of these systems that we're talking about are underpinned by this process where a traveler has a digital identity constructed about them often referred to as a data double, a collection of characteristics that it could include biometrics like their fingerprint or, you know, spatial image, as well as biographical details, their age, where they were born, and all sorts of other details that are generated about them. And then that's their data double that is then either searched on databases to see if there's a data double on a criminal or migration database that matches it, or, increasingly, it's compared against a constructed digital identity that is used to represent something. Or used to represent what a foreign business person looks like. Or a legitimate traveler, a tourist, yeah, or used to represent what a terrorist would look like, or what someone else would look like. And so the important thing to know here is that computational systems never actually come to know or understand a human being. You know, they can't actually shake your hand and look here in the eye and have a good chat to you. No, they just have points of data, right? They work with. And so that's this process underpins so much of modern digitized bordering, and I think it's really interesting and important to highlight this because there are forms of exclusion that are being generated by this underlying system. And one form of exclusion here, we can think of as enrollment exclusion. And that's just your inability to generate a data double can then be used in a border assessment. So, that's a very, I might say brilliant clever argument being here, Louis, because, you know, at one level, you might skip straight to the fact that data doubles are being used in socially unfair and unjust ways, but that presumes that everyone has more or less the same ability to have a data double. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, if we think about the border again as a relationship, the very first step for a traveler is to be seen. If you're not seen by a computational system, if you're not seen by the sovereign, you are in the most vulnerable position because you're then you don't exist, then anything can happen to you really, but it's a side note. And so, yeah, generating a data double, what does it take? You might need a driver's license, you might need a banking history, you might need lots of things, a data double might involve certain housing history. Yeah. If you can't generate these data points, you might not even be able to register for a trust to travel a program of another country or register for a certain visa category. And so, there's a form of exclusion that occurs at a very start line. Yeah. And if you get over that start line, then there's still another form of enrolment exclusion that occurs because of the hardware and the software that's used in digital bordering systems. Okay. So, what are some examples? So, the cameras, like smart cameras, that will take photos of people's faces. Yeah. In truth, they have gotten a lot better, but they still tend to be calibrated on a certain skin tone, or they are better at picking up certain skin tones and others. Yeah. So, we fingerprint scanners, once again, have been better at certain ridge depths. And different ethnic groups have different ridge depths. And also, a red one, really interesting article that I drew on in my book, that spoke about it being a bit of a class thing as well, because if you do lots of manual labor, where you damage your fingerprints and things, then. Do you know what your ridge length is? Is that all? My ridge depth. Rapt depth, yeah. No idea. Do you think that's something that people will talk about in the future, as like an attribute like, "Hey, how's it going? I've seen you got some great route." Well, I feel like, as a white male from a wealthy country, I can't complain too much. I feel like most of the systems are probably calibrated towards me. Probably. My one criticism would be Eric, a very minor criticism, is that I always need to bend down a lot to get into the cameras, when I'm in an airport. Yeah. I always take my glasses off and squint at things, which is a bit irritating. Yeah, that's great. The best part of the new digital system is to get you, Louis, to have the squint and bend over, you know? Slightly. Yeah. That's got to be the most benign form of enrollment exclusion in the entire world. I feel so very prosecuted, I have to get a photo taken, and they asked me to put my thumbs right on these skinners, and it was a little bit lower than I preferred. Exactly right. Exactly right. So, once you do get over the enrollment exclusion, you're in the system, then there's another form of exclusion, and this one has been heaped through it and about, and that's kind of the algorithmic exclusion that can occur. And there's a few aspects to this. One aspect to this is that it's those comparative identities that are generated to tell the system what a legitimate or a type of illegitimate traveler looks like. And as a general thumb, you could say that those identities tend to exclude minority groups. And there's been a few reasons given for this. One being that if algorithms are used to produce those identities, and if they're being produced on big data sets, then that tends to prioritize the norm. And the majority culture, the majority person. Yep. And so, people who exist on the periphery are more likely to be excluded by those comparative identities. Yep. Another thing is that the comparative identities will do things like look at what country people who are defined as terrorists come from, and then treat that country as a risky profile or as a risky category. And so anyone who comes to that country then gets caught up in that process. And in fact, a really famous example of that was the UK's visa streaming tool that essentially did that, but it was worse because what it then did was it marked people from certain countries as requiring extra levels of screening. And then those extra levels of screening led to a higher rate of people from that country being found to be problematic in some way. And that fed back into the data source. Yeah. And so it's kind of a little bit like labeling theory in some respects, right? They require those people to go through extra screening, but the mere fact of going through extra screening raises a red flag. 100%. So it's like a self-fulvilling, you know, prophecy or whatever. That is 100% correct. And you know, it's a really good point because in some ways what we're describing isn't really that novel, right? Like you said, like labeling theory, like it makes sense, like what minorities are being excluded by borders. No crap. Yeah. The borders have been doing that for a long time. But one thing I suggest, and others have suggested about this new form of kind of digitized exclusion is it's not seen as bias because these systems are represented and understood as discovering the truth about someone, that they're objective. This is mathematics and science. This isn't an individual being racially biased. This is an objective system describing someone as being potentially threatening. And so that's something that makes this quite different to past forms of profiling essentially. And so this seems to connect then to another argument you advance in your book, which has to do with like the agents that are involved in this new bordering process, this new digital boarding process. Yeah. And agents, by the way, not just like that work at a particular agency, as a broader sense in what you're using the term. Yes, that's right, agency as in the ability to take an action to, you know, traditional sociological understanding of agency. Yeah. And I suppose the question is, who performs the border? Okay. Who's the one? Or maybe what? Yeah. Or what? Exactly. Because if we think about the border and who creates this sovereign relationship, it's not just a human being, and in fact it never has just been a human being. Because let's say there is a border guard sitting at the edge of a territory. Well, if I didn't want to be boarded, as I entered that territory, I'd just walk around them. And in fact, in an airport, if a border guard was just standing in the middle of a massive room, and I didn't want to, you know, have to go through customs, let's say I was carrying heats of wood back from Bali to Australia, I didn't want them checking for like little white holes. Not that I had done that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'd just go around them. So what else is needed in an airport, let's say, for the sovereign decision to be performed? Well, we need infrastructure. We need gates and fences to funnel people past the border guard. Then we need laws that the border guard can use to have power. Otherwise, when he says, I want to look in your bag, I'll say, no, I don't, what you look at my bag, potentially the border guard needs a uniform so that I respect them, and I understand what their role is. And it goes on and on, and all of these different things, even though they're not human, they are contributing to the sovereign decision. It is a process that involves collective action. This idea is something that I draw on the work of Bruno Latour to discuss in the book, in particular, act of network theory, which describes agency or describes an action as being performed by a collection of admins, which all contribute to it in some way. I suppose in a way, Latour is controversial because he proposes that, you know, the humans not necessarily very special. Yeah. That's right. The agency isn't simply an attribute of humans. No, no, these other things can be just important to the performance of the sovereign decision spread across them, and they all influence one another, as they interact. And together they create the output that is the decision about the traveller, whether they can enter or not. So do you use the concept of the assemblage then to describe what's happening when borders are being constructed, they're being defended? Absolutely. And in fact, the theoretical repertoire is here to provide a whole heap of conceptual tools for describing a particular assemblage or actor network and how it functions to produce an outcome. And so we've digitisation, what we have is we have digital technologies being enrolled into these assemblages. And so how does the assemblage change as you add in an algorithmic risk assessment system or you add in a smart gate? And it ripples changes across the entire actor network because it influences how the overarching sovereign decision is performed, whether someone is excluded or excluded, but it also changes each other's actions role and responsibilities and what they do. So the border guard, for instance, as they're asked to look at a risk assessment score of a traveller, it means there's a little less emphasis on them eyeballing someone and interpreting them and thinking do I trust him, do I believe her or do I believe what they're saying. And there's a bit more emphasis on them being able to understand their computer and what's going on there. Yeah. So who they are and what they're doing is changing and digital technologies are doing this in fundamental ways across the assemblage that performs the border. And while this is often thought of as a sort of displacement of the human as an algorithm or a machine replacing a human being, it's not really that simple. Like I said, it's more about the role that humans are playing in borders, changing and adapting. Yeah. So your argument isn't that like humans are simply just replaced entirely in this bordering process. It's not like you adopt these technologies and then you're greeted by how the robot at the border, humans are still involved somehow. Exactly. Yeah. And in fact, the only sort of how the robot at the border that I can really think of as of my head was a system in the UK that was tried called eye-border control. And it's like the go-to example of digitized borders. And it's great because it was an avatar on a computer screen. People would have to sit down and talk to this avatar. It had asked some questions. The cameras looked at their face to see if they had as a light detector essentially biomarkers off the seat. It was called. Interesting. And then the interesting thing about it is if the system thought the person was lying, the avatar would get stirner and arson more aggressive questions. So they developed an effectual relationship. Interesting. Yeah. But the system never got rolled out. Even though I still read paper after paper where people reference their system and talk about it as an example of digital technologies transforming borders. The reality was there was a public backlash. There was huge criticism about how accurate the lie detecting was. And it's, I think, an example of what isn't happening with digital border transformation. So that notion of the complete digital system replacing human beings just hasn't played out. At the top of that, even that system rolls new human beings into the border. Because if we think of the border as an actor network, well, that system had to be designed by computer scientists. That's right. It had to be developed by all these people who are selecting what data sets are going to go in. Yeah. Someone presumably had to play the pretend traveler to test the system. And it needed to be refined, so on and so forth. Yeah. And I mean, this does open up other lines of conversation. It kind of reminds me a bit of the work of Paul Verilio, who spoke about, as missiles are used in warfare, it changes the role of human decision makers in the process and put some earlier on in the process. When these systems are being conceived, that's when you make the important decisions. Because no one's going to have time to press, you know, launch the missile or not. So automated once the missiles start flying. Yeah. And maybe we borders a similar thing is happening. Yeah. The really important decisions are made when the code for algorithms are developed when the system set up. So this is a really difficult question answer, I realize. But like, who ultimately then is responsible? You know, where do you attribute responsibility to in bordering systems that can lead to very unjust, unequal social outcomes? Well, I think that is a fundamental question, something I kind of begin to delve into in the conclusion of this book, because I think ultimately if you're talking about responsibility in a descriptive sense, like who's actually contributing to the decision, then it's now spread across such a complex actor network that it is difficult to put your finger on, you know, agents who can, you know, single out as the responsible party. And I think a key part of this is that humans are playing less important role. So they do hold less overall responsibility. I refer to this as humans shifting from holding the position of mediators in actor networks, which are positions that can fundamentally influence the overarching output to more commonly holding the position of intermediaries, which sort of link together other actments, but don't really play a major role. If a visa decision is made ultimately by a human being, so they're the last one in the chain of decisions that leads to a visa being granted or denied, but that human being just always oppresses accept on what the algorithm told them to do, then they're just an intermediary. So Maze will be, you know, the letter being sent or the email being sent, they're not actually impacting it. And I think there has been, and this is quite a controversial thing, other people would stop and disagree with this, but I think there has been a general displacement of humans into these more intermediary roles. So going back to the question of responsibility, and if you want to hear more, you're going to have to buy the book, which happens to be 20% off of the account rate of DG mobility. I think we need to separate off who we hold responsible from who is actually responsible for the decision, because when you're subject to a bordering decision, you have to be able to take someone to court. You have to be able to point to someone who can hold responsible for it. And that's not such a foreign or a strange idea, because say in Australia, the Minister for Immigration is ultimately responsible, doesn't matter who makes a decision and how it goes, there is a figurehead who can hold responsible for it. And so I think we need to refine how people can challenge these systems, and we need to create avenues for people to be able to challenge these very complex act of network. Now, there are like loads of other arguments and points that you make in this book. We don't have time to look at them all, but it would be a shame. It would be a missed opportunity. If we didn't at least just mention that your book also covers the topic of travel. Yeah. So it's not just about bordering. There's something to do with travel that your book says something insightful about. What is that? Well, I think I'm obviously fascinated by borders, and I do tend to get carried away of them, but I need to remember Foucault who we've discussed in podcast episodes, and Foucault's kind of core statement for me that power is never expressed in a vacuum. It always needs a target, and it always experiences some form of resistance in some way. It's a relationship, and orders are a relationship. So everything we've been describing is only one side of that relationship. The other side is the traveler, and the process of travel itself is being digitized. We're all familiar with it. I mean, early this year, I spent some time in Japan, and I can tell you, I just would not survive without my smartphone. Yeah. I translate everything, I use Google Maps, I wouldn't be able to find my way through the train system, I wouldn't be able to do anything without my smartphone. So travel is experiencing a plethora of fundamental changes, which is altering what it means to travel, what it feels to travel, how people travel, and there are chapters in the book where I cover some of this, and I cover how it's changing the relationship between the traveler and the border, because although there are all these new systems that are used to identify travelers, to analyze travelers and to perform the sovereign decision, travelers aren't cultural doves, they're not inert, they interact with these systems, they sculpt their data doubles to try and get the answer they want from a border, they use their digital technologies to pass through borders. When you do travel to Japan, I think they have at least from my travels one of the best apps for registering everything before you get there, and then you just walk through the airport and scan like three QR codes, and you pretty much through it, it's phenomenal. But people don't just blindly fill these things out, they're also thinking about how do I gain entry into a particular country I want to get entry to. Exactly. In the chapter where I discuss this, I draw on the work of Michelle Desertoy, and I look at how a lot of what we've been discussing, we can think of as the strategies of borders. Borders try and fix the spaces, the roles, everything that's supposed to occur, and then travelers within that structure play with it, reinterpret, engage with it, and try and bend the border to get the outcome data's higher, ultimately crossing the sovereign threshold. Fascinating argument, Lily, again, what is the name of your book? The name is Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders, how digital technology is transformed, migration and sovereign borders. Published by DeGroder. Use the code. DG Mobilities. For a 20% off discount. It even better. Pressure your university library or your local library to buy a coffee, that's what I'd say. If you don't, I'm going to hunt you down, I'm not going to hunt you down, you're fine. Alright, well, on that note, thanks very much for listening, as always, we're catching the next episode. Thank you. [Music] [Music]