Privatised Digital Borders

The AFAR undertaking explored the function of digitisation and automation in migration and asylum governance in Europe, figuring out many regarding practices and accountability deficits. An additional pattern exacerbates the accountability problem: states more and more outsource migration administration to non-public firms, comparable to within the case of visa functions. Whereas the privatisation of migration management just isn’t in itself a brand new phenomenon, privatisation and digitisation of their present constellations pose new challenges. Collectively, these developments are remodeling what was a bureaucratic, paper-based course of right into a digital-commercial infrastructure, which profoundly impacts questions of basic rights, transparency, and democratic oversight.

On this submit, I exploit visa functions as a concrete instance for instance these broader dynamics and argue that we want new strategies to check them, and new regulatory responses. To protect accountability and rights safety, we should analyse visa methods by inspecting how know-how and personal actors are ruled. I shut by suggesting that participatory, co-designed know-how, as explored in my undertaking Tetramag, can supply a path towards extra democratic migration infrastructures.

From paper dossiers to digital portals

Till lately, visa functions had been largely analogue: bundles of paperwork submitted in individual, examined by consular frontline clerks, and determined in a mixture of administrative routine and discretionary judgment. In the present day, the method is being re-engineered. On the nationwide stage, a number of EU states have launched formidable digitisation programmes. Germany’s Visa Digitalisation Initiative, for example, goals to exchange paper kinds totally, transferring to digital processing, digital uploads, and automatic inside workflows. On the EU stage, the revised Visa Code (Regulation 810/2009, as amended in 2019) and its implementing Handbook encourage harmonisation and digitisation, together with on-line software submission and centralised databases such because the Visa Info System (VIS), or digital overhaul of the visa software course of. Furthermore, AI-assisted and automatic decision-making in addition to risk-assessments in digital visa methods are gaining traction.

Digitisation and automation promise effectivity, lowered ready occasions, and data-driven coordination. But, as students and civil society critics highlighted, digitisation additionally introduces new inequalities: entry relies on digital literacy, dependable web connections, and the power to navigate advanced on-line kinds. For a lot of candidates – for example, these in areas with unstable connectivity and candidates with restricted digital literacy or with disabilities – these methods create further obstacles somewhat than take away them. As latest analysis inside the context of the AFAR undertaking has proven, from the perspective of migrants because the central “knowledge customers”, in some cases, digitising migration-related administration processes tends to be seen as a hurdle somewhat than an enchancment.

The expansion of personal intermediaries

Parallel to digitisation runs the externalisation of visa processing to non-public firms. Throughout Europe, governments contract companies comparable to TLScontact, VFS World, or BLS Worldwide to handle software consumption, processing and doc transmission. Candidates usually work together solely with these service centres somewhat than with state officers. As an example, in 2017, Germany delegated visa issues in 17 states to non-public intermediaries, a quantity that has grown to 57 within the meantime, with extra nations lined up. This delegation bears the danger of blurring accountability. Furthermore, delicate private knowledge, together with fingerprints and monetary data, are processed by entities that lack democratic oversight and management.

Clearly, the pattern of outsourcing migration management to non-public actors predates the rise of digitisation and AI-based options. This longstanding delegation already requires cautious consideration to the ex ante inclusion of migrants and ex submit mechanisms for accountability. What’s new, nevertheless, is the rising intertwining of privatisation and digital applied sciences: the push in direction of automation and AI just isn’t solely altering how present service suppliers function but additionally driving additional externalisation, drawing in new non-public actors comparable to tech firms. This convergence additional complicates questions of transparency, accountability, and oversight, making strong safeguards for migrants extra pressing than ever.

The problem of regulating non-public actors and digitalisation

The completely different gamers concerned and their roles are, after all, topic to regulation each on the nationwide and the EU stage. Relating to EU legislation, the EU Visa Code and its Handbook for Processing Visa Purposes stay the central authorized devices. Article 43 explicitly permits Member States to cooperate with “exterior service suppliers”. The cooperation shall be based mostly on a authorized instrument, the necessities for that are set out in Annex X to the EU Visa Code. Article 43 para 6 restricts the duties that exterior service suppliers could also be entrusted with, and para 4 makes clear that the examination of functions, interviews (the place applicable), the choice on functions and the printing and affixing of visa stickers shall be carried out solely by the consulate itself. Member States shall scrutinise the solvency and reliability of the corporate (para. 7), present coaching to the exterior service supplier (para. 10) and intently monitor the implementation of the authorized instrument on which the service supplier operates, inter alia by finishing up “spot checks” (para. 11). Extra usually, EU knowledge safety (the GDPR) and AI legislation apply to each private and non-private actors. Whereas these regulatory frameworks are important, how they affect the design and dealing of infrastructures is an open query, one which my new undertaking will discover.

Ex ante scrutiny: anticipating rights infringements within the age of automation

Subsequent to legal guidelines regulating the work of personal actors, there are additionally frameworks that pertain particularly to the digitisation and automation in visa methods and migration administration at giant and topic them to ex ante scrutiny. As analysis from the AFAR undertaking has proven, present authorized devices strategy this scrutiny by means of completely different logics. The EU Synthetic Intelligence Act (AI Act) classifies AI methods utilized in migration, asylum, and border management as “high-risk” and requires conducting a Basic Rights Affect Evaluation (FRIA) to anticipate potential hostile penalties. But, the trialogues on the AI Act have considerably weakened the FRIAs in scope and potential affect, e.g. by dismissing the proposition to contain representatives of the individuals which can be more likely to be most affected by high-risk applied sciences. Total, the AI Act presents little steering on the content material or scope of assessments, decreasing them to a formalistic box-ticking train. In contrast, the Council of Europe’s Framework Conference on AI introduces the HUDERIA methodology, which asks concerning the context wherein instruments are used, how they function in follow (somewhat than on paper), and the way roles and duties are distributed throughout their lifecycle. As AFAR researcher Đuković (2025) argues, the place the AI Act’s FRIAs lack precision, HUDERIA supplies detailed indicators, requires publication, and embeds consumer participation by means of a stakeholder engagement course of, which is why combining the AI Act’s authorized certainty with the Conference’s richer variables might yield each clearer obligations for authorities and stronger safety of basic rights. In follow, nevertheless, neither framework could also be ample. Throughout the AI Act, the classification of “high-risk” applied sciences stays ambiguous, not together with sure migration-related applied sciences and permitting deployers to sidestep FRIA obligations by strategically redefining a system’s objective. HUDERIA’s strategy is extra complete and context-sensitive, but it applies solely to states which have ratified the Conference.

Nonetheless, we all know little or no about how ex ante scrutiny truly unfolds in follow within the area of digitised migration and border management, visa processing being a major instance. States usually interact exterior legislation companies to make sure compliance with knowledge safety, administrative, and basic rights requirements. These companies can establish authorized challenges, however they rely on their public-sector shoppers and on non-public service suppliers for the technical and factual info wanted to conduct their analyses. Even extremely specialised legal professionals usually lack the technical experience to guage advanced digital architectures, relying as a substitute on documentation from builders who could omit essential particulars or don’t really feel accountable for the system as an entire.

Consequently, there’s a threat that authorized assessments are carried out on partial info, reproducing the opacity they’re supposed to treatment. On this configuration, the state’s due diligence dangers changing into largely procedural – a box-ticking train that fulfils formal compliance necessities with out partaking substantively with technological design or the lived realities of individuals on the transfer. There’s nonetheless remarkably little empirical analysis on how these advisory chains function, and the way they affect the authorized and technical design of visa methods and migration governance extra broadly. Understanding these dynamics is important if FRIAs are to grow to be real devices of rights safety somewhat than bureaucratic rituals.

In the direction of extra participatory types of regulating digital borders

The bounds of present regulatory approaches level to a broader problem. Ex submit regulation just isn’t sufficient to make sure that privatised, digitised methods don’t violate human rights on an enormous scale. Counting on ex ante affect evaluation relies on the robustness of these assessments and the way they’re carried out in follow, which too usually grow to be tick-box workouts.

My new analysis takes these observations as a place to begin to ask a wider query: who participates in shaping digital migration infrastructures, and whose views are heard or excluded? Throughout the Tetramag undertaking, we are going to look not solely at how ex ante assessments are carried out but additionally at how design, implementation, and analysis processes unfold throughout private and non-private actors — together with authorities companies, legislation companies, know-how contractors, and civil-society organisations. On the centre of this inquiry are migrants themselves, each as knowledge topics and as customers of those methods.

Earlier than proposing participatory alternate options, Tetramag seeks to look at how present digital infrastructures already form, and infrequently silence, views of individuals on the transfer, constructing and increasing on the preliminary AFAR report on Automating Migration and Asylum by Derya Ozkul. Who has entry to design discussions, and whose experiences inform usability testing or human rights affect assessments? Who can query knowledge practices or audit algorithmic outcomes? Solely by mapping these absences and partial inclusions can we meaningfully think about alternate options. From there, focussing on digitisation migration pathways and the post-arrival part, the undertaking explores how extra participatory and clear approaches may emerge comparable to

Collaborative design: involving migrants, diaspora teams, or authorized help suppliers in growing functions and determination instruments, not as end-users however as co-designers.
Shared oversight and coding literacy: giving civil-society, knowledge topics and researchers entry to studying knowledge, codes and determination logs as a useful resource to know, critique, decode and recode digital methods
Duty and transparency by design: guaranteeing that candidates can perceive which knowledge form their functions and outcomes, and may contest selections

Participation, on this sense, just isn’t an ornamental add-on to regulation. It’s a methodology for revealing and rebalancing energy inside digital infrastructures.

Concluding remarks: towards participatory sovereignty

Digitised visa methods of at this time exemplify how migration management has grow to be a joint enterprise between states and personal contractors, carried out by means of code, contracts, and algorithms. This hybrid infrastructure redefines sovereignty and duty: selections as soon as made by consular officers are actually mediated by software program and repair suppliers; assessments of knowledge and AI compliance are outsourced to legislation companies, and the traces of significant accountability and oversight grow to be additional blurred.

Current European frameworks — the Visa Code, the AI Act, and the Council of Europe’s AI Conference – tackle elements of this digital panorama however fall wanting providing a coherent response. They regulate features, not relationships, compliance, not energy dynamics. What the Council of Europe’s AI Conference already consists of however is lacking within the bigger system is a framework of participatory sovereignty: mechanisms that embed these most affected by digital migration governance – migrants, on this case – into its design, scrutiny, and redress. Opening the black field of visa methods is thus each a democratic and a technical activity. It requires collaboration between legal professionals, technologists, and the communities whose mobility is at stake.