Digital Authoritarianism and Migration Governance: A Comparative Perspective

Contemporary politics is marked by crisis of liberalism and rise of post-truth and post-virtue politics of populist autocrats. As digital technologies reshape the social, economic and political relations, the authoritarian playbook gained new tools for control and repression – such as algorithmic surveillance, micro-targeted disinformation, internet censorship and/or shutdowns. Implementation of these new tools particularly stand out in migration governance. As millions of people now live in countries where they were not born in, new technologies became significant tools to manage borders, discourage the “unwanted immigrants”, shape public perceptions and bypass legal constraints. Introduction of new tools such as biometric systems, algorithmic risk assessments, interoperable databases, along with incorporation of old practices such as disinformation, propaganda, censorship into new technologies, has become a key driver of rising authoritarian practices in both the Global North and the Global South. In other words, digitalized migration controls – which began as technical solutions to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of migration management, – paved the way for serious questions regarding sovereign accountability, executive aggrandizement, state-citizen (and state-non-citizen) relations. Adopting a comparative perspective, this paper seeks to highlight the impact of digitalization on democratic backsliding and autocratic resurgence over the study of digitalization of migration governance. It seeks to emphasize the distinct impacts of digital authoritarian practices on citizens and non-citizens (i.e. refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants) focusing on three cases: Turkey, Italy and Hungary. The paper argues digitalization played an important role in reshaping the notion of sovereignty, weakening accountability (and transparency), and creating new forms of dependence particularly within EU-member/partner relations. The first half of the paper provides conceptual and theoretical background on the scope and nature of digital authoritarian practices and its link with migration. The second half focuses on the analysis of the three cases and shows how power consolidation and democratic backsliding go hand in hand with digitalization of migration governance.