AI is entering procedures and experiences of migration across global, national and urban levels. It is impacting migration governance and its different actors across the US and the UK in surprising, alarming, confusing, and sometimes promising ways. For instance, in the name of efficiency and a large backlog of immigration cases, both high-end legal firms and under-resourced legal nonprofits are engaging AI in complex and diverse ways, from piecemeal, home-grown solutions to strategic applications. At the same time, biometric surveillance of vulnerable populations expands from outer borders to inner cities, making their lives more precarious. Policy makers and legal experts on national and urban level are reckoning with how to use AI technologies in effective and responsible ways.
Given the urgent nature and stakes of these emergent phenomena at this political moment, this workshop provides a forum to explore questions at the intersection of AI, migration, policy, and advocacy, especially at the level of the city. The research team convening this event spans New York University and the London School of Economics and Political Science with expertise in technology, migration and urban life. Over the last year, we have interviewed experts in law, technology, and policy about how artificial intelligence is being integrated into immigration law, policy, and advocacy, and how lawyers, policy-makers, technologists, and nonprofits are responding to these changes, both in the United States and the UK. This workshop serves to discuss these preliminary findings and open up the conversation to more voices.
In this hybrid workshop, we seek to bring together practitioners, stakeholders and scholars engaged in the field of migration and new digital technologies. Fostering an exchange between actors such as technologists, lawyers, policy-makers, civil society actors, and academics, the goal of the workshop is to explore and compare information, experiences and insights on how AI impacts practices, raises questions and introduces new challenges in the migration space.
The event will be clustered around three thematic panels (see below). In each panel, speakers are invited to address a series of questions on how AI and other new digital technologies have become part of migration governance.
The workshop is part of the research project AI Rationale: How technologists, policy makers and lawyers imagine artificial intelligence for migration in London and New York City, funded by the LSE-NYU Research Seed Fund.
Preliminary programme (subject to change, all times UK):
- 10.00am Welcome and Introduction
- 10.30am – 12.00pm (in person only) AI / migration / urban: Probing the connections
- 12:00pm – 1.00pm Lunch
- 1.00pm – 2.30pm (hybrid) AI / migration / governance: Alarming and promising encounters
- 3.00pm – 4.30pm (hybrid) AI / migration / futures: Responsible and effective reckonings
Organising team:
Prof Myria Georgiou, LSE
Dr Philipp Seuferling, University of Glasgow
Shivani Rao, LSE
Prof Radha Sarma Hegde, NYU
Dr Margaret Jack, NYU
Registration and contact:
Please register here:
Registration form for workshop: AI / Migration / Futures: Connections and Conversations – Fill out form
Contact: Shivani Rao, s.rao15@lse.ac.uk