Technoresistance: How can digital technologies counter the current migration regime?

Migration and border regimes in Europe and beyond have become highly digitalised and datafied. Simultaneously, digital methods and tools are increasingly employed to investigate, make visible, and counter violent control practices against migrants and racialized groups. Building on critical migration and border regime research, we conceptualise these digital practices of resistance and counter-knowledge production as technoresistance. In our lecture, reflecting on the long legacy of technoresistance, we present three recent forms: counter-surveillance, counter-mapping, and forensic investigations. In view of increasing research on practices of technoresistance, we argue that for a deeper analysis, we need to attend to how these digital practices enable forms of resistance, critique, or solidarity, and how they relate to hegemonic knowledges and aesthetics. Finally, we need to carefully reflect on who might profit or be harmed by knowledge production on technoresistance.