Predictive Bordering: Frontex’s Drones As Actors Of Time Above The Mediterranean

• In Event: Proliferation and dispersal at the border (Proliferation, dispersal and (in)security #2)

Abstract

In recent years, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex has been intensifying its use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), aka drones. In fact, semi-automatic RPAS are becoming the crown jewel in the risk analysis apparatus stretching around and beyond the EUropean borders. In my paper, I investigate these developments as a special form of governmentality combining data archives, migratory pattern-based predictions, and the dispersal of responsibility on human and non-human actors. In doing so, I combine research on patterns and predictions in e.g. predictive police work with research on the European border regimes to uncover continuities of Frontex’s use of risk analysis in the proliferation of the EUropean Border. I then examine the consequences of a border regime practice focused on risk assessment and its culmination in the distributed agency of semi-autonomous flight systems with special reference to the dimension of time. How do partially algorithmically controlled drones as actors in the Mediterranean border region change the temporal landscape of the border regime? Basing on empirical work with Frontex, my paper sheds light on the integration of partially algorithmically controlled drones into the agency’s vision and practices of a Mediterranean colonized future. By doing so, the paper contributes to the understanding of big data identities, algorithmic actors and the temporal and spatial proliferation of borders.

Author

• Anika Redmann, Europa-Universität Viadrina