Beyond the EU’s Cyber-Fortress: Decolonial Perspectives on AI and Migration; and Surveillance Technologies and the Targeting of Dissent: A Global Expansion

Abstract

Beyond the EU’s Cyber-Fortress: Decolonial Perspectives on AI and Migration AI is often framed as objective and neutral, but its application in social and political contexts reproduces harmful and discriminatory outcomes. By formalizing complex social issues into technical problems, algorithmic systems obscure the inherently political nature of tasks such as predicting ‘acceptable’ and ‘risky’ bodies. The management of human migration in the European Union exemplifies these dynamics. Indeed, migration is often framed as a security issue, portraying migrant people as threats linked to disease, crime, or risk, justifying expansive surveillance measures and predictive technologies that reinforce racial, gendered, and class-based inequalities. The EU’s move towards a ‘Cyber-fortress’ underscores a troubling detachment between technological systems and the human realities they govern. These systems often obscure the human realities behind migration, reinforcing discriminatory practices and ignoring systemic causes like colonialism, economic disparity, and global power imbalances. Moreover, prioritizing border control efficiency over human dignity has devastating impacts, dehumanizing migrant people and overlooking the inequalities embedded in these systems. Resisting this trajectory demands a critical rethinking of the ethical foundations of migration management and the technological apparatuses that sustain it. This involves moving beyond Western-centric and institutional paradigms toward decolonial approaches that center the voices of migrant people, those most impacted yet least represented in technological development and security research. It reclaims also a technology that must be removed from the exclusive domain of the powers that be and returned instead to democratic action. Even more urgently, it pushes us not to accept the normalization of the exceptional and to search, among data and algorithms, for what remains of the human. Surveillance Technologies and the Targeting of Dissent: A Global Expansion This study provides a policy level synthesis of global surveillance capitalism and its transformation into an authoritarian instrument of civic control. It traces the exponential growth of the surveillance industry, projected to exceed $88 billion by 2030 and $40 billion in the broader security sector by 2034, linking its commercial expansion to the suppression of dissent and the erosion of democratic freedoms. Through empirical evidence, it demonstrates how AI driven facial recognition, geofencing, biometric tracking, and spyware such as Pegasus enable “mass deanonymization,” converting anonymous protest into individually punishable conduct. The research situates surveillance proliferation within an international political economy shaped by corporate obfuscation, cross border acquisitions, and regulatory evasion, with entities like NSO Group exemplifying the global diffusion of unaccountable surveillance infrastructures. Case studies including European Pegasus deployments, U.S. protest monitoring, and academic surveillance of student activists reveal chilling effects that constrict civic engagement and reconfigure risk perceptions in public expression. The paper concludes that the convergence of market incentives, weak oversight, and advanced analytics heralds a paradigmatic shift toward predictive authoritarianism, imperiling the epistemic foundations of democracy unless robust transnational governance mechanisms intervene.