Migration and its governance are increasingly caught up in the promises and deployments of new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. From visa paperwork and asylum applications to access to housing, care, and legal resources, automated and predictive systems are becoming embedded in how migration is managed at both national and city levels.
This project explores how AI is imagined, justified, and contested in the governance of migration in two global cities: London and New York City. We focus on three key groups shaping this landscape, technologists, policy makers, and legal professionals, to examine how AI is being integrated into migration policies and practices.
By comparing these two cities, the project sheds light on the growing role of AI in migration governance, the ethical and political challenges this creates, and the ways in which automation reshapes the lives of migrants in urban settings.
The project brings together researchers from the London School of Economics and New York University, combining expertise on digital change, migration, and governance. Insights will be shared with academic, policy, and civil society stakeholders, including through a public workshop in London.
This project addresses a significant moment where two debates converge:
- The growing reliance on AI in public governance, and
- The intensifying focus on migration governance in the Western world.
Through this lens, the project aims to:
- Investigate AI’s role in migration governance: Understand how AI technologies (e.g. automation, machine learning, predictive systems) are imagined, designed, and deployed in migration processes in London and New York City.
- Map rationales across sectors: Examine how technologists, policymakers, and lawyers justify, promote, or resist the integration of AI into migration systems, and what values and priorities guide these choices.
- Analyse urban sites of governance: Explore how cities act as “inner borders” where AI-driven systems shape migrant settlement, mobility, and access to resources such as housing, benefits, and legal aid.
- Identify points of friction and contestation: Highlight where and how automated systems fail, are challenged, or generate ethical and legal concerns, particularly regarding migrants’ rights and fairness in decision-making.
- Advance comparative knowledge: Provide transnational insights by comparing London and New York City as global sites where migration is governed, contested, and lived.
- Engage stakeholders: Feed findings back to relevant actors, including policymakers, technologists, civil society, and legal practitioners, to foster critical reflection and dialogue on the technological governance of migration.
Professor Myria Georgiou
Co-Principle Investigator
Interests and expertise: audience research; diaspora; migration and the media; identity and the media; media and the city; transnational communities and networks
Dr Philipp Seuferling
Co-Principle Investigator
Interests and expertise: media and migration; borders; media technologies; media history; media theory; cultural histories of science and technology; critical cultural studies
Shivani Rao
Research Assistant
Interests and expertise: Smartness; Optimisation; Smart city; Digital city; Subjectivity.