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Across the globe, states and international organizations are increasingly deploying advanced digital technologies (ADTs), from biometric registration and AI-driven risk assessments to mobile applications mediating access to services, as tools of migration management. While these technologies promise greater efficiency and innovation, they also raise urgent ethical and political questions around surveillance, discrimination, accountability, and the rights of migrants and refugees. At the same time, platform-based work, algorithmic decision-making and the environmental costs of energy-intensive data infrastructure are reshaping migrant labour and mobility.

Digitalization is also transforming migration research itself. From digital ethnography and big data analytics to participatory and community-based approaches, ADTs are creating new opportunities while challenging established approaches to data collection, analysis and research ethics. These developments call for reflexive and interdisciplinary dialogue that critically examines digital transformations while remaining grounded in migrants’ lived realities.

The IMISCOE Spring Conference 2027 will explore the intersections of technology and migration, with a particular focus on the implications of ADTs for migration governance, human rights, labour and mobility, and public discourse and narratives about migration. It will also examine how digital technologies are reshaping, and challenging, conventional migration research, including its methods, ethics and power dynamics. Contributions and invited presenters will critically engage with these transformations across diverse contexts, disciplines and methodological approaches.