Encountering the digital border: smartphone screening in the Dutch asylum procedure

Abstract

Driven by digitisation and datafication, borders are multiplying across territories while becoming mobile, interconnected and black-boxed. In this article we consider how authorities repurpose the data stored on smartphones of asylum seekers as a new instrument of border control and migration governance. In the Netherlands, Border Police officers conduct manual checks of digital devices and computer-driven screenings of data extracted from devices with the aim of verifying the identities of asylum applicants and to detect national security threats or instances of human trafficking. We provide an empirical case-study of the screening of smartphone data as part of the Dutch asylum procedure to better understand when, how and why cultural encounters shape digital borders. For this purpose, we conceptually distinguish between (1) how digital borders are shaped by interactions between actors, (2) how borders are negotiated through analogue and digital technologies encountered and (3) how cultural encounters at digital borders are enacted through symbolic practices. Empirically, we present findings from analysing public records and documents obtained through freedom of information requests alongside 22 in-depth interviews with relevant stakeholders including people with personal experience with the asylum procedure, policymakers, technology developers, field coordinators, lawyers, and representatives of non-governmental organisations.