Magdalena Arias Cubas

Senior Research Officer, Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab

Magdalena (Malena) Aria Cubas is the Senior Research Officer at the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab and an Adjunct Fellow with the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University. She is a social scientist with over a decade of experience in research specialising in international migration. Originally from Mexico, she has held multiple research and teaching roles in Australia and has led qualitative and quantitative research with migrants in vulnerable situations in the Americas, Africa, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from the University of Sydney, and her work has been published in Comparative Migration Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Migración y Desarrollo, Migration Information Source, and the Revue Europeean des Migrations Internationales among other outlets. Her research interests include the intersection between migration, inequality, and humanitarianism. 

Louis Everuss

Centre Coordinator, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, University of South Australia

Louis Everuss is a Research Associate and Coordinator at the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, University of South Australia, where he also lectures in sociology. His research interests are in the sociological study of mobilities, sovereignty, migration, and borders. His work has studied various subjects related to these themes, including how systems of mobility are incorporated into representations of sovereign outsiders, the way borders are racially constructed through everyday performances of the law, and how public opinions of climate change are impacted by national context. His research has been published in Political Geography, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, the Journal of Sociology and Applied Mobilities. His first book, Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders: How Digital Technologies Transform Migration and Sovereign Borders, is being published by De Gruyter in 2023. Along with Dr Eric Hsu, he is co-host and co-creator of the Sociology of Everything Podcast. 

Adama Kamara

Deputy CEO, Refugee Council of Australia

Adama Kamara is the Deputy CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) - the national umbrella body for people seeking asylum, refugees and the organisations and individuals who support them. She has 15 years’ experience in refugee services, health and local government, as well as personal and family experience of seeking asylum and supporting newly arrived refugees from her home country of Sierra Leone. She has a passion for community-led initiatives and is an advocate for meaningful participation. She has led co-design projects with young people, people seeking asylum, refugees, culturally and linguistically diverse communities and service providers.  One example is the multi-award-winning Refugee Camp in My Neighbourhood project, which she initiated and has led since 2014. 

Nikolas Feith Tan

Senior Researcher, Danish Institute for Human Rights

Nikolas Feith Tan is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, where he works on refugee and asylum law. He is presently on temporary assignment as Senior Protection Officer with UNHCR. He has published widely on key questions in refugee law and policy, including access to asylum, externalisation, cessation and community sponsorship. He has taught masters-level courses related to international refugee law with three universities across Europe and recently acted as legal consultant for Amnesty International, the Danish Refugee Council and Migration Policy Institute on various aspects of international protection.

Chair: Madeline Gleeson

Senior Research Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law

Madeline Gleeson is a lawyer and Senior Research Fellow at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW Sydney. She specialises in international human rights and refugee law, with a focus on the law of State responsibility, extraterritorial human rights obligations, offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island, and refugee protection in the Asia-Pacific region. She has extensive experience working with forcibly displaced people around the world. She has worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia, and UNHCR and the International Catholic Migration Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. She also has human rights experience in South Africa and Indonesia, and previously practiced as a solicitor in Australia. Madeline holds a Master in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland; a Bachelor of Laws (with First Class Honours) and Bachelor of International Studies from UNSW; and a Diploma in Political Studies (Certificat d’Etudes Politiques) from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence, France. She is admitted as a practitioner of the High Court of Australia and the Supreme Court of New South Wales. 

2023 Conference Panel 1 Scenario, 'Will people in need of protection be able to access it?'

It is 2033, and over the past decade, the rate of displacement has continued its upward trend. Record high numbers of people have now been forced to leave their homes due to the intersecting drivers of conflict, persecution, serious human rights abuses and the effects of climate change and disasters. Many are internally displaced, but others have crossed international borders and are sheltering in neighbouring countries.

Across the Global North, there has been widespread take-up of policies that contain asylum seekers in the Global South. For those few who do succeed in reaching the Global North, protection is not available. It is now common practice for asylum seekers to be removed immediately and transferred to partner States in the Global South to have their claims processed there. Public opinion in the Global North has adjusted to the new reality in which irregular migration is almost non-existent, and only refugees specifically chosen for resettlement or other visas are permitted to enter and remain in their countries.

This new paradigm has been made possible by the large-scale development of border technologies and unprecedented data-sharing arrangements between States in the Global North and South, international organisations, and large corporations. From the moment a person flees their home, their biometric and personal data is used to track, predict, control and divert their journey.  Border officials have been replaced by biometric and sensing technologies which use a combination of passport readers, cameras, CCTV systems and body scanners to identify travellers and assess their reasons for travel and risk factors (including any potential intention to apply for asylum). Attempts to enter outside these official points are also frustrated. Global surveillance tech is used to predict, monitor and prevent irregular maritime journeys, and to intercept attempts to cross land-borders other than at formal points of entry.

The success of this system hinges on the cooperation of States in the Global South which have made their support conditional on an increase in resettlement and complementary pathways to protection, including the expansion of work, student, family reunion and other visa programs. They have also insisted upon a significant increase in economic incentives, technology transfer and humanitarian and development aid.

For their part, governments in the Global North have reaffirmed their commitments to protection for displaced people, albeit through government-operated and ‘regular’ migration channels.

Kaldor Centre Conference 2023

Panel Session 1, 'Will people in need of protection be able to access it?'

MADELINE GLEESON (MG): Welcome everyone to the first of what will be three panels over the course of the day exploring hypothetical scenarios about the future of protection. Each panel will engage with a different scenario, each set in a fictional 2033.  This morning’s panel focuses on whether people in need of protection will be able to access it.

Shortly, you will be shown a video setting out the first of today’s scenarios. As we then work with it as a panel, we invite you to bear in mind a few things. This scenario, like the others that you'll see today, is not intended to be a prediction, nor are we saying that it is likely or even desirable. But because most of us don't spend our days thinking across a 10-year horizon, the purpose of the scenario is to help us imagine a different context and to ask what it would mean for protection if this were the world that we lived in. You can think of it as a sand pit in which we explore the opportunities, challenges and trade-offs that may await us.

Second, we will have time at the end for Q&A, So, please submit your questions through Slido, and we turn to them later. The Slido details are on the holding slide and the panel page in your programs.

Now, it is with great pleasure that I welcome our four panellists this morning.

Adama Kamara is the Deputy CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia, the national umbrella body for people seeking asylum, refugees and the organisations and individuals who support them. She has 15 years’ experience in refugee services, health and local government, as well as personal and family experience of seeking asylum and supporting newly arrived refugees from her home country of Sierra Leone. 

Magdalena Arias Cubas is the Senior Research Officer at the Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab and an Adjunct Fellow with the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University. She has extensive experience across the globe working directly with migrants in vulnerable situations and her research focuses on the intersection between migration, inequality and humanitarianism.  

Louis Everuss is a sociologist and Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of South Australia where he studies mobilities, sovereignty, migration and borders. His book Digital Mobilities and Smart Borders: How Digital Technologies Transform Migration and Sovereign Borders is due to be published imminently, So, we will be counting on him to bring us right up to date with developments in the field of border tech. 

And finally, we are grateful to be joined by Nik Tan, who is coming to us remotely from Denmark – at what I believe is a terrible hour – to share his expertise on access to protection. Nik has worked with various organisations but is speaking to us today in his personal capacity as an experienced senior researcher who has published widely on key issues of asylum and refugee law and policy, including externalisation. 

Welcome to our panellists. Now let's discover our scenario.

VIDEO VOICEOVER: It is 2033 and over the past decade the rate of displacement has continued its upward trend.

Record high numbers of people have now been forced to leave their homes due to the intersecting drivers of conflict, persecution, serious human rights abuses and the effects of climate change and disasters. Many are internally displaced, but others have crossed international borders and are sheltering in neighbouring countries.

Across the Global North, there has been widespread take up of policies that contain asylum seekers in the Global South. For those few who do succeed in reaching the Global North, protection is not available. It is now common practice for asylum seekers to be removed immediately and transferred to partner States in the Global South to have their claims processed there. Public opinion in the Global North has adjusted to the new reality in which irregular migration is almost non-existent,and only refugees specifically chosen for resettlement or other visas are permitted to enter and remain in their countries.

This new paradigm has been made possible by the large-scale development of border technologies and unprecedented data sharing arrangements between states in the Global North and South, international organisations and large corporations. From the moment a person flees their home, their biometric and personal data is used to track, predict, control and divert their journey. Border officials have been replaced by biometric and sensing technologies, which use a combination of passport readers, cameras, CCTV systems and body scanners to identify travellers and assess their reasons for travel and risk factors, including any potential intention to apply for asylum.

Attempts to enter outside these official points are also frustrated. Global surveillance tech is used to predict, monitor and prevent irregular maritime journeys and to intercept attempts to cross land borders other than at formal points of entry.

The success of this system hinges on the cooperation of states in the Global South, which have made their support conditional on an increase in resettlement and complementary pathways to protection, including the expansion of work, student family reunion and other visa programs.They have also insisted upon a significant increase in economic incentives, technology transfer, and humanitarian and development aid. For their part, governments in the Global North have reaffirmed their commitments to protection for displaced people, albeit through government-operated and regular migration channels.

[end video]

MG: Nik, let's turn to you first to help us set the scene a bit for the scenario we've just seen on the video. In the scenario, some of the practices and trends of externalisation, offshoring, non-entree that we're already seeing today have reached their inevitable end point such that Global North States have effectively stopped all spontaneous arrivals from the Global South from being able to access protection. Nik, can you summarise briefly for us, what are some of these trends or practices that we're already seeing, and what is their global spread or development looking like at the moment?

NIKOLAS FEITH TAN (NT): Thanks, Madeline and good morning, colleagues. It’s wonderful to be back at the Kaldor Centre and sorry to be only joining virtually. So, as you say, I mean, externalisation is not a term of art. It doesn't appear in any international legal instrument. And indeed, scholars – and indeed governments – have defined it in various ways, including remote control, non-entree, deterrence and protection elsewhere. But to give a sense of what we're talking about, externalisation has been defined by Jeff Crisp, for example, as measures taken by States in locations beyond their territorial borders to obstruct, deter or otherwise avert the arrival of refugees.

More recently, the Refugee Law Initiative Declaration on Externalization, which I co-convened, defined it in rather broader terms, in terms of the shifting of functions normally taken territorially so that they take, in part or in whole, outside the territory. So, the essence, then, of externalisation, to my mind, is the externalisation of functions of border-control, asylum procedures, or indeed refugee protection, to a third State.

Now, in terms of what we see today, the most visible forms of externalisation are well-known to many in this room. They involve attempts to externalise asylum responsibility by sending protection-seekers to third countries, indeed, in the Global South. Australia has played a leading role in this area, but we could also think of the EU-Turkey statement. And, of course, the UK’S attempts to externalise responsibility to Rwanda. Denmark has recently passed legislation to externalise responsibility to a third state. And just last week, we saw the announcement of an Italy-Albania protocol, which may have some externalisation features. I'll stop there.

MG: Thank you, Nik. So, that's what it's looking like currently at the State level. Let's home in a bit on the human impact of what we're talking about. Magdalena, what are some of the concerns you're seeing from the perspective of people on the move?

MAGDALENA ARIAS CUBAS (MC): Hello. I think aside from what Nik said, one thing to keep in mind is that externalisation really means the pushing of technology, surveillance and funding further South. And one of the main things we have seen now and we hear often from colleagues working in other regions is that migrants are facing increasingly dangerous journeys. And that also we've seen more women and more children facing those dangerous journeys. So, even in this, even if in this future we imagine we can stop migration, which is highly unlikely, there will still be people moving under these very dangerous situations.

A related risk, which already was mentioned already this morning, is the breakdown of trust. And this is something that we have seen already with this – a breakdown of trust between people in vulnerable situations and those seeking assistance and protection. And here I'm using term protection from the humanitarian perspective – as activities to ensure that people have the basic rights met. And we've seen in some regions and some countries with this – a lot of policing, a lot of securitisation against migrants – is this breakdown of trust, where migrants will avoid humanitarian actors will not seek help for the fear of being detained, arrested or deported. So, we know that these risks are here now. I guess we have to multiply them 100 times in this future scenario.

MG: Let's turn to the second key component of the scenario. The idea of externalisation reaching its end point and effectively stopping all arrivals is only made possible by the significant rise in the use and impacts of border tech. So Louis, for those of us who are new to this concept, what exactly is border tech? And can you give us a few examples of of how it plays out, how it works at the border?

LOUIS EVERUSS (LE): So, broadly speaking, border tech is simply a technological device or process that is used to help perform and enforce a sovereign decision – the decision about whether someone can enter a political community or whether they're excluded from that political community. When we think about advanced border tech, we're generally talking about forms of technology that rely on digital data and that involve some sort of computational processing and sometimes, in the more kind of advanced border tech, machine-learning algorithm and algorithmic risk profiling.

So, some common examples of border tech that is deployed, and would need to be deployed for this scenario, would be the simple biometric identification of travellers – the creation of data-doubles about travellers and the use of that to match them to travel documentation. We probably all, or many of us, would have experienced that simply when we go through an airport smartgate and the card on our passports scanned; it brings up our data-double which has certain biometric details like facial imagery and it's matched to us, to match us to our documentation. At the same time, that form of matching also searches quite large databases, both migration and criminal databases, and so there's that back-end searching of databases to try and understand travellers on the move, that's involved in border tech.

And the two other features of border tech which would be necessary for this scenario, and they're also already in play, are the algorithmic risk assessment of travellers. So, that's not the matching of them or the searching of them in databases. That is an algorithm developing a normative profile, the kind of ‘ideal insider’ or the ‘ideal outsider’, and comparing someone's data-double to that normative profile to try and tell the system who that person is or whether they should be feared or not, I suppose. And that would need to be incorporated into a lot of infrastructure – it kind of already is. Say, with advanced passenger processing, before you board a plane in an airport overseas, an algorithmic risk assessment is generally done on you, and it can lead to the airport employee having a notification, a ‘Do not board’ notification, pop up on a screen. So, all these things are kind of happening in the back end. Visa-processing systems, advanced passenger processing, a lot of systems already – and that'd be integrated more generally into infrastructure and surveillance infrastructure, which I can talk more about as we go through this scenario.

MG: Thank you. And in our second panel today, we're really going to deep dive into the use of technology in assessing claims. But in this panel, we're going to stick at the border and stick at the the route to protection. Louis, if we stay with you for a moment longer: Borders have long been sites of violence, discrimination, human rights violations. How might the widespread roll-out of these technologies exacerbate those concerns that we've already seen?

LE: That's a really interesting question, I think, because to some researchers, there are inherently discriminatory or biased aspects to certain bordering tech. So, for instance, drones. Drones are heavily criticised for representing people through drone vision – a bird's-eye view kind of, you know, photo or video imagery, often with military signifies like crosshairs or a military font or something else – that promotes a certain way of understanding migrants. It promotes a threatening way of conceptualizing migrants and also a way that abstracts migrants from context. So, as soon as decisions are being made in a bordering context based on drone vision, you potentially have a way of understanding migrants which is a bit problematic.

And then of course there's other aspects of bordering tech which inherently incorporates bias into bordering, like algorithmic risk profiling. That comparative process essentially embeds a logic where difference becomes threat. The further someone's data-double is away from the population-level composite identity used to assess whether it's a threat or not, the more threatening it becomes. So, that can entrench bias against minorities. And even prior to that, just the scanning of biometrics involves what's called ‘enrollment exclusion’ because smart cameras, for instance, are generally calibrated on a certain skin tone, fingerprint scanners are calibrated on a certain ridge depth, and so this, it can obviously lead to gender, ethnicity, racial bias and prejudice in the system as well.

But having said all of this, there are positive potentialities to a lot of border tech, like being able to give an ‘uncertainty score’ for a decision. Human beings can't really give accurate levels of uncertainty to decision-making. So in some respects, I do blame borders as much as I do tech, in terms of how it's embedded. But yeah, there's some of the risks.

MG: Thank you and thank you for the slightly optimistic uptick at the end and we will hope over the course of the panel to not take us too far into the negative and to also look at some of these opportunities. Before we move on from tech, though, Magdalena, I saw you nodding your head a bit there. States have obviously been constructing policies with tech forefront of mind for a while now, but what about humanitarian organisations, civil society and people on the move themselves? To what extent have they begun to think through the implications of this tech, and what are some of the concerns that they might have about the collection, sharing and use of of personal data in this way?

MC: I'll start with the last question and then move back to the first one. I think one of the main risks in this future scenario is the collection and sharing of biometric and personal data, not only between States, but also between States and international organisations and corporations. So it raises risks for migrants and important questions we have to ask, like, is there even meaningful consent? Are we adopting measures that are extraordinary in the name of national security? But there's also important questions for the functioning of the humanitarian system. Two of the basic principles of humanitarian organisations like the International Red Cross, Red Crescent Movement are the principles of neutrality and independence. Neutrality means that we don't take sides, and independence means that we try to remain autonomous, to be able to act according to the principle of humanity, impartiality. So, what happens? I guess the question is, what happens when we fail to be neutral or independent, or even if we are perceived to be failing to be neutral or independent, by collaborating so closely with some States in the sharing of that data? So, I guess the other way to put the question is, why would migrants trust us if they see us to be so closely aligned with the political decisions of some States to control them, in ways that may potentially harm the safety, well-being and dignity?

Moving to the first question, in terms of how humanitarian organisations are approaching these challenges of technology, we have seen that some of the big organisations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, for instance, having conducted research on future scenarios. We also have seen that we are having international dialogues on digital technologies. And some of the key questions that we're exploring, for instance, are, I guess, the key risks and benefits, but also questions of data protection, cyber-attacks, which sadly are already a reality, the spread of misinformation and also the use of new technologies in the delivery of aid. Having said that, I do believe this is one of those issues where, first of all, there is a lot of lack of transparency, and also that specialised knowledge has not really trickled down to the average humanitarian practitioner, to the average member of civil society or to the average migrant that is affected by these technologies. So in the future, something that we clearly need is access to accessible information, reliable information, to those affected.

MG: Thank you. Nik, if we throw to you, what is your research showing about some of the risks with the use of this technology and perhaps some of the opportunities as well?

NT: Thanks, Madeleine. Yeah. I mean, I think the risks have been well covered by colleagues. I think the primary risk, in terms of international refugee law here, of course, is that these increasingly restrictive border regimes, but also indeed externalisation that reaches well beyond the border, will set off a domino effects whereby more and more destination states are externalising the time responsibilities – not to share burdens, but to shift it, and not to expand protection, but to diminish it. And that's indeed where our scenario lands today. The opportunities I see here are that, following the work of Ayelet Shachar in 2020, who of course worked on the shifting border, there may be scope to essentially retool some of these methods and technologies at the shifting border to open up extraterritorial access to protection. So, Shachar doesn't set out a model but sets out two sort of baseline requirements to this idea to be realised. The first is that core human rights law obligations should follow the border – the shifting, dynamic border work on the basis of a functional approach to extraterritorial jurisdiction, which would be known to many of us in the room – and secondly, that the link between territory and protection should be minimised, thus relaxing the fixation on territorial access as a precondition to securing asylum. This is often returned, referred to in literature as reaching, touching base, in Europe or the US. So, in my forthcoming book, Transnational Asylum, I set out a framework for how these sorts of externalisation approaches could be retooled and to function as responsibility sharing in future. In other words, how we could conceive of international cooperation between destination States and transit States, that is both lawful and amounts to a form of responsibility sharing?

MG: Thank you, Nik and that's a great point for us to pick up on there, this idea of responsibility sharing and shifting, which has been a long-standing feature of discussion in this sector in in the country here and more broadly. So, the scenario we saw today rests on the assumption that in exchange for effectively closing off asylum, Global North States in exchange would significantly expand resettlement and complementary protection pathways and also expand and build upon humanitarian aid and assistance and other measures as sort of the trade-off for no longer allowing people to arrive spontaneously in the Global North. Let's focus in on that first part, that idea about significantly expanding resettlement and complementary pathways. And Adama, I'll turn to you here. Resettlement has traditionally been one of the main mechanisms through which people recognise as refugees can access a route to protection in the Global North. But there are other so-called complementary pathways, too. So, what are some of the promising practices that we're seeing developed today in terms of these routes?

ADAMA KAMARA (AK): Sure. Complementary pathways are regulated and safe pathways for people in need of international protection to get find safety in a new country, in a third country. They're regulated, in the sense that there's a specific program, and I guess resettlement has focused on those most in need of protection. But complementary pathways, I guess, provide an additional pathway. So at the moment, you know, education, community sponsorship, family reunion are examples of complementary pathways. And we know that complementary pathways are actually increasing. We know, for example, you know with the Global Refugee Forum happening next month [December 2023], there is a number of pledges that are going to be made by a range of stakeholders in support of the various complementary pathways. So, I think the growing movement is that there's multiple stakeholders; it's no longer reliant on governments. It's also calling in on the broader communities. So, we're looking at business, we're looking at universities, looking at community as well, in getting involved in providing protection for people in need of protection.

MG: Thank you. So, we'll return to resettlement and some of those complementary pathways in a moment. But before we do, are there other durable solutions that are missing from the scenario?

AK: Yeah, I think that complementary pathways and resettlement form just one part of the puzzle. We've got voluntary return. We've also got local integration, as well. And I think this scenario does not allow for that, which is problematic. It's the assumption that the Global North is the destination for all people in need of protection – it’s actually, I think, there's a level of saviorism that comes with that. Being able, if you have crossed the border, being able to build a life in that country that you have that you are in, is actually – it may be the better option for you, if you are recognised by the national system. So if you are able to be educated, have a job, access to health care, you know, raise your family safely – that might actually be a better option than going to the Global North, which could be distinctly very, very different to where you're from. So, I think this scenario is problematic in that it assumes that Global North is the destination.

In our work at Refugee Council, we do a lot of national consultations, and often what we what we hear from refugee communities is that, if they had known what Australia would be like, they would not have come. So, people have come with humanitarian visas and are safe. However, we all know – you know, what I'm about to say isn't new to anyone working in this field – you've spent your life educating yourself, and when you arrive in Australia, that means nothing; you have to start again. Your skills, your work experience is not recognised. You might need to retrain, learn a language, and racism – the level of racism and discrimination is significant. So, I guess it doesn't surprise me when people say, if I had known, I would not have come.

I mean, my father is the one person who says this all the time. University lecturer, came to Australia and he's actually a teacher, a geography teacher. So, he thought, Yep, I'm going to apply the Department of Education. And he applied, and they said he had to retrain. I won't repeat what he said, because there were a couple of swear words there. But that's just an example. So, I think that we have this, this – I challenge this scenario in that, the Global North is not the destination often. Yes, it's part of the solution, but it's not the only destination.

MG: Thank you. Magdalena, you're nodding your head. Does that resound with what you've seen?

MC: Full agreement.

MG: Alright, wonderful. So, this idea of resettlement and complementary pathways being the silver bullet or the one thing that can be handed out in exchange for the border tech and externalisation would fall down. If we return to it, though, for a moment, because it would have some role to play as it does now – it can be a lifeline for its beneficiaries. But it can also be an inherently discretionary, potentially discriminatory process and have its concerns. If resettlement and complementary visa pathways were to become the tools relied upon to mitigate the end of asylum for asylum seekers arriving in the Global North, what steps would we need to take to ensure that it did in fact enhance access to meaningful protection? And, Nik, I might turn to you here to start. Is there a way that the proposed scenario could be achieved in a matter in a manner that actually enhances protection overall and is consistent with international law?

NT: Well, the short answer is no, frankly, but a couple of considerations. I mean as you've already mentioned, a key problem is that both resettlement and complementary pathways are discretionary policy instruments that can be turned on and off like a tap. Sweden for example, just reduced to their resettlement quota from 5000 per year to 900. We all know what the Trump administration did first time around. So, to be serious in offering alternatives to territorial asylum, there's a massive need for scaling up. I also think frankly that – complementary pathways have been described very eloquently today, but they're not necessarily that well understood. They're relatively recent introductions at the policy level, by UNHCR primarily. So, there's some way to go to fully regularise and develop these and scale them up. As a refugee lawyer, I mean, to be serious, in my mind, there's a need for legislation, at both national and regional level, with respect to both resettlement but also complementary pathways. This could be through, for example, the EU resettlement regulation in draft form, or through international agreements between States where States voluntarily enter into obligations to resettle, such as the Comprehensive Plan of Action. There's a long way to go, and to be frank, colleagues, I think we'd all agree that this sort of – the best we could hope for in such a scenario is a sort of hybrid solution whereby there's retained access to territorial asylum for some, but indeed the use of what I call pre-entry processing along key mixed migration routes; this could be in the form of humanitarian visas for example, or full-blown responsibility-sharing regional processing hubs, providing safe and controlled access protection before undertaking long and dangerous journeys. I'll stop there.

AK: I think with this scenario that, for some refugees, there is actually not any change, because we know that the Global South host majority of the world's refugees. So, not being able to go to the Global North is actually no different to what we're currently experiencing; only a small proportion actually get access to resettlement or complementary pathways. I think the other issue with this scenario, I think the other thing to highlight is that it kind of – the protection of people seeking asylum and the responsibilities of both the Global North and Global South, it's kind of, they’re let off the hook. If you are saying that people in the Global South can't go to the Global North, what responsibility does the Global South have in making sure those rights are met? I think that's a key question. In this scenario, we need to ensure that if people aren't able to move, they're still able to access their rights – and perhaps that's a motivation for them not to move. But we need to ensure that's built into the system, and there's an assumption that the Global North is going to be able to meet all the rights. And we've I think we've seen scenarios in the world where that's not the case. If anything, we're moving more towards the right, where, you know, there's a lot of policies against, you know, movements across boundaries and how refugees are protected. So, yeah, and I think, yeah, I think I'll leave it at that.

MG: Louis.

LE: I feel like, just to be a kind of contrarian, maybe I need to talk up in favour of the scenario a little bit. Because I do think in Australia, one thing that has maybe motivated some of the horrible hostility we've had towards asylum seekers arriving by boat has been the uncertainty of it. It seems particularly triggering for an Australian audience, the irregular nature, even though it shouldn't necessarily, but it is. And so, potentially this scenario, it would provide a level of predictability which might make it easier to increase the total number of the humanitarian intake. And if you could guarantee certain conditions – if you could guarantee that, as has already been pointed out, that overnight there's not a reduction in the intake – which is what we've seen in Australia, because this is quite reminiscent of the [former Prime Minister Julia] Gillard's Malaysia solution where the ‘no-advantage principle’ was developed, and it was supposed to be a net increase in the number of people coming, and then obviously all the punitive parts of it got kept and all the good parts of it got scrapped. So, if you could lock in a net increase in intake, and if you could also lock in policies that address the root causes of people having to do enforced movements, then I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to the scenario. But I think the chances of locking in those things are pretty slim.

AK: Yeah, I think I'll just going to pick up on your last point. I think that humans are very unpredictable. People, we're unpredictable, and we can't predict when the next conflict is going to happen. Maybe we can, but sometimes it happens. So, I think that's the challenge with this scenario. You're assuming that you can predict human behaviour, you can predict the next conflict, you can predict where people are going to go – and I don't think that's going to be possible.

I think the other thing, also not to be too negative, I think the other part of this scenario that I want to highlight is the agency that refugees have. So, people are able to, wherever they're seeking protection, are able to rebuild lives, and able to support each other. We know that in first response – refugees are often first responders to their communities in need. So, we've seen across the world, they're providing education and healthcare and everything that you need basically survive, for each other, in the absence of any other support. I think in a scenario like this, refugees who are in the Global North, their role is greater, their work is greater, in that they may have access to the decision-makers in Global North to actually advocate for increased intake for particular hotspots or particular populations. It's inequitable because it's about access to power, and those who have access to power able to perhaps influence. But I think that just shows the greater influence and agency that refugees have, and the real importance of meaningful participation. So, refugees being able to be involved in decisions that affect their lives. So, in the Global North – in this scenario, refugees in the Global North will be hopefully will be able to influence the decision makers and say, ‘OK, this is a scenario, this is a conflict zone, this is this group needs protection, let's increase our intake from that particular....’ So, that's me trying to be positive.

MG: Thank you. And I think it would be helpful for us to shift our attention a little bit more towards the Global South so-called, or, you know, the countries that would be hosting the largest numbers of displaced people in this scenario – and that do so today and are likely to do so for the foreseeable future. Now, even with this radical expansion in resettlement and other pathways, that is still the place where most people would be residing. And so, there would need to be, as we've discussed, a dramatic increase or change in the way that aid, development, mobility and other programs are structured. What are some of the reflections from the panel on what would need to change in the current dynamics of relationship between the Global North and Global South in terms of aid development, mobility pathways? What would need to change or be restructured to make this palatable? You know, for people on the move but also for host communities and host States in the Global South?

AK: I think it's hard to get past actually making sure asylum is part of this process. I can't get – I know that the scenario says this is the end of asylum, but I can't get past asylum being a fundamental part of this process. This scenario, you need to be able to seek protection, regardless whether you're living, in the Global South or live in Global North, and without that, it's going to be quite challenging. I also think it presents an opportunity for the Global South to put together greater bargaining in terms of its need. Often the Global South are the recipients of aid, and that aid is given in a manner that's determined by the by the giver. They'll say, ‘This is our priority, this is what we want to you to achieve, and this is how we're going to give it to you and these are the KPIs or outcomes we want you to achieve.’ So on and so forth. But I think there's an opportunity there for the Global South to say, ‘Well, this is actually what we need,’ and use it as an opportunity to develop its people, its country.

MC: So, I think this really relates to one of the comments that the wonderful keynote speaker mentioned in the morning, about imagining a future that is not only based on the reality of the Global North, but that really we cannot imagine the future without talking to the Global South and talking, having the meaningful participation of refugees and asylum seekers in making these decisions. And if this is a system that is decided by a group of – apologies for the word, but – white people in Europe and the US, it would be a very different system than if it's a system that is decided in consultation with asylum seekers across the world. So, that would be my positive spin on the things, that if we actually had meaningful participation, it would look extremely different.

MG: And are you seeing any positive practices currently that might give rise to the sorts of shaping and changing that we're speaking about this morning? [Pause.] Maybe we'll leave that there and come back to it. Let's stick with this discussion about the power dynamics and the relationship between the Global North and the Global South that that would underpin this. What are some of the risks and opportunities? I want to delve deeper into this and maybe if I throw to you, Louis, first, let's start with technology, because it depends on a greater integration between States, companies, international organisations across the world, regardless of North and South, to be able to achieve the type of data transfer that you envision. What are some of the risks and opportunities that might come with that?

LE: Well, I think that's quite an easy question to reflect on, because we are seeing this right now. One of the things about the deployment of, you know, digital tech in borders is that we're starting to get these – the actual border is being performed by quite a complex assemblage of actors, which is less completely based with governments than it's maybe been for a very long time, or maybe ever. For instance, tech companies are now playing a really big role in bordering, because they're helping to design the systems that will determine whether people are coded as a risk or not. And interestingly, the same tech companies are developing similar systems for different governments in different places around the world. So, you could mount an argument that this conflation of bordering processes is already well under way, if the way we're coding people, as threatening, as deviant as potentially compatible with the political community, is already being conflated. And on top of that, there are other examples I can think of, like whether someone's had a visa rejection or been deported in one jurisdiction being used as a data point to determine their risk in a different jurisdiction. That, once again, is sort of a conflation. And some authors like Louise Amoore and David Lyon refer to modern bordering tech and surveillance tech as becoming a kind of global system of sorting populations, where similar definitions are starting to be used. So, this sort of scenario where the Global North in a common way starts to sort and order populations, I think is well underway. And it's not so much necessarily a strategic decision of governments. It's just a reality of how the technology is being developed and deployed.

MG: Magdalena, can I throw to you and ask, given what Louis just said about – it sounds quite dehumanising, but – people being sorted and categorised in this way, is this something that's on the agenda yet of of humanitarian organisations, international organisations? Is there any way to counter this trend that's already emerging?

MC: I mean, it is on the agenda, but as I said, I think some of the policies we are – for instance, there's a lot of research coming, especially in Europe, about the use of technology for asylum processes, for the control of borders. But something that we see is a really strong lack of transparency in terms of those policies. It's actually difficult to access information. I think there is a potential, for instance, to use the technologies in ways that could help people. But then again, we need to think about – they need to have very strong safeguards. So, for instance, technologies could be used to enhance access to assistance and protection, say we could move from more reactive to anticipatory approaches, but we really cannot, we cannot do that unless we have strong safeguards in the policies, meaning that we have no mandatory checks, we have no rights, we have no detention - so, there's no association between seeking assistance and protection, and the risk of being detained or deported.

There are other ways we can think about humanitarian organisations using data for the best. For instance, one of the things there's a lot of interest in the International Red Cross Red Crescent movement at the moment is the issue of missing migrants. We know there's a massive number of people dying and going missing each year. I think IOM puts the figure at around 59,000 people since 2014. But that's really, like, they're really, really, really, really basic undercounted, and we know that the data is lacking in other ways. For instance, we're not counting women and children; the data is really not disaggregated by gender and age. So, in an ideal scenario, we could use technologies to know why people are missing and how we can minimise those risks. But then again, and this is where the realist comes in, the reality is that people are going missing and dying for certain reasons that we all know. So, unless those technologies were used with safeguards to ensure the safety, dignity and rights of people it is very difficult to imagine a future where the technologies would not hinder some of the most vulnerable.

MG: Thank you. And I think that idea of safeguards is a really good one to bring into the next set of questions. Because if this is indeed already happening, and to an extent this is already the route we're on, but we hopefully will not end up fully in the case of the scenario. But we do need to start thinking about what safeguards need to be erected and protected now to protect us against what is coming. So, let's take that idea of safeguards into the next set of questions, which are designed to stress test the proposed scenario a bit. I feel like we've already stress-tested pretty thoroughly, but let's take that stress testing to the next level. We spoke before about the idea of whether human movement or human behaviour is controllable or predictable, and I think that's a useful starting point because the proposed scenario does presuppose a degree of order and control over human behaviour and human movement, and also a level of stability between Global North and Global South relations that is not necessarily reflective of experience to date.

So, I propose three possible scenarios that would really test what we've seen today and ask each of the participants to reflect on what it might mean. First is, what if the effects of climate change, including escalating disasters and rising seas, rendered large parts of refugee hosting States such as Bangladesh uninhabitable, leading to new waves of displacement such as, for example, almost one million Rohingya refugees currently being hosted in Bangladesh, no longer being able to remain there and being suddenly put on the move again?

What if widespread conflict erupts throughout the Middle East, spreading from State to State and disrupting efforts to resettle people out of that region, or to establish complementary pathways out of that region, because a base level of stability just isn't possible?

And then what if we see a rise in authoritarian regimes in the Global North, so that this commitment that we've clung to, the commitment to protection and asylum, slips further and further out of reach at the end of the Global North?

These are three not-unrealistic scenarios. How would they impact upon what we've been discussing today? Nik, I might turn to you first for your reflections.

NT: Thanks Madeline. So, I think in fact all three scenarios do demonstrate some of the limits of the the proposition today. The first limit is in terms of scale, of course. So, in a mass influx situation – resettlement, complementary pathways, they rely on a certain level of order and control, as you say, and a certain, the use of sort of transit sites to register and funnel people into various pathways. So, in a mass influx emergency that, those sort of temporal advantages just aren't there. There's also, of course, scale questions – as to whether they're sufficiently scaled up. I think then what we can say is that resettlement and complementary pathways, don't get me wrong, are incredibly important part of the future of the protection system, as well as the current. But they need to operate as part of this toolbox alongside national asylum systems and tools like temporary protection, which we've seen in the EU recently to provide protection essentially on a de facto basis to 5.9 million people fleeing the Ukraine crisis.

MG: Thank you. Turning now to the panel for each of your thoughts. I might start with you and work down. So, we're looking for reflections, particularly around safeguards, and then to the extent that you wish to speak on it, how the voices and perspectives of people on the move themselves might be drawn into this process.

LE:  In terms of protections and what we can do to help kind of shape developments in more positive ways, one thing about bordering tech is, in many respects, I don't think the bad part of that noun is the tech part. I think the bad part's the bordering part. Because technology is created when it's put into context and it's embedded into legislation and culture and everything else. And there are a lot of things like risk-assessment algorithms, which like I mentioned before, can be quite positive tools because they can provide uncertainty scores, you can control what characteristics about a person they assess, and so there are instances in which we could use it in a good way. There's a good example from the US where there was an algorithm deployed to assess whether the migrants who were still having their credentials processed were a risk to community and should be detained. And they developed an algorithm to assess this. And the algorithm kept on recommending that they weren't a risk and they shouldn't be detained. And so the designers had to keep on going back and tinkering with the algorithm and [inaudible] to detain people, because essentially the political drive to detain the population had to end up controlling the system. I think that shows how we can start to think about these things and put up some guard-rails; how do we embed it in legislation? How do we understand the outcomes of some of these technologies in ways that are productive?

MG: Thank you. Magdalena?

MC: I think in terms of safeguards, I think, coming from the humanitarian perspective, would be that thing – how do we have a strong separation from immigration-control activities and people be able to access basic humanitarian assistance and protection? And this is something that we're already encountering now, in which, for instance, certain organisations, some colleagues have been pressured to, for instance, assist in the involuntary return of migrants. So, how do we make sure that division still exists between the humanitarian system and the immigration-control system? And the other safeguards are really, if you come from a migrant background, should be quite basic. You should be able to access basic health without fear of being detained. You should be able to access assistance if you're fleeing domestic violence, without the fear of being deported. So, how do we make sure that some of those really, really basic rights are safeguarded for everybody, irrespective of where they come from and how they came here?

MG: Thank you. Before we turn to Adama for her final thoughts on this part, we will be doing questions after this. So, please either enter them into the Slido, or get ready with hands up for the microphones shortly. Adama.

AK: Well, I think the system's going to collapse. This scenario is going to collapse because of the sheer volume of people, and it's just as important, probably the tipping point might be that it's actually happening in the Global North. The Global South perhaps, you know, the systems are built to keep them there. So, the numbers may increase, but the way this scenario plays out, it's not going to change anything until it happens in the Global North, until people in the Global North are in need of seeking of protection and wanting to seek protection, and they realise, well, actually our systems don't work, so, let's rethink it and let's think, how are we sharing responsibility? And what does that look like? Go back to the beginning, and say let's speak with refugees themselves and say what do they think is important? What are their needs? Are they happy to be, you know – we go back to the mechanisms that are already in place, you know, in voluntary return, local integration, or resettlement. So, it goes back to the foundation of the Refugee Convention and the durable solutions there. But it will take us some time to get there, because only those in when those in power are impacted is when something will change.

MG: Thank you very much to the panelists. We are now going to throw it open for all of you to also engage with this scenario with us. As mentioned, there are two ways to put your questions forwards. So, for those with questions who'd like to speak on the mic, I'd invite you to start raising your hands and the microphones will come around. In the meantime, we do have a question through from Slido, which I'll throw to the panel. Anyone would like to come in, please just give me a sign. The question is could we see more countries in the South forcibly returning refugees like Pakistan is now. Is this the start of a new trend like Australia's offshore processing policy was?

AK: I think it's already happening. I think – any people are crossing borders in seeking protection and the borders are closing, there's hostile treatment in country in those host countries, So, it's already happening. I think this scenario would just amplify that.

MC: I agree. When we talk about the externalisation of borders, that's also, what it means – that people are being detained and deported not only in the North but on the way to the North, in transit when they're seeking assistance and protection, or simply protection in a neighbouring country. So,  it's not the future. It is already the reality.

MG: Thank you. Yes, you're in the front.

[Audience question] Thank you. And thank you. Very, very interesting discussion. My name is Elizabeth Collett. I'm a Global Fellow with the Migration Policy Institute. There's been a push at the global level to expand access to legal identity and, associated that with that then, access to digital identity. I'd love to hear the panel's thoughts on what the opportunities and risks are of expanded legal identity for protection, whether or not people take dangerous journeys over long distances or are seeking protection in the region in which they're displaced, and how that could be managed effectively as as a proposition for the future.

MG: Thank you. I'm sorry, do you mind repeating the question? It was a bit hard to catch up here.

[Audience member] Within the UN, there's a push to expand access to legal identity So, civil registration that people's identities can allow them access to social protections, whether in country or overseas, access to passports, biometrics, eventually, as a global public good. But what does that mean then, for the future of protection, whether in the Global North or in the global South? And where are the risks and opportunities of that? Sorry for being unclear.

LE: I suppose I would see mainly risks, because I think, I'm not sure how an identity like that, or kind of a biometric profile, would be treated in certain places. It all would depend about how governments would treat it, essentially. And I think there is a big risk, as we kind of touched on before, of there being overlap between what biometrics were originally recorded for and what they end up being used for. So, once these biometric profiles that are tagged to a population that is already controlled and restricted in forms of movement, how that keeps on being used in the future, I'd be quite wary of. And one thing we haven't really spoken about – we've looked a lot at externalisation of borders, which is a really important topic – but one thing about modern borders is they're just being completely de-territorialised. It's not just about externalisation, it's just as much about internalisation. And these technologies don't just make borders reach out to people to kind of assess them prior to reaching traditional territorial boundaries, they then follow people, networks and – smart cameras, for instance. If you think about some of the systems in parts of China, for instance, where there are smart cameras that continue to border people, continue to sort people – based on ethnicity, based on minority status – as they move around, they give people less opportunities based on who they are or who they're thought to be. So, I'm quite wary of biometric identity being developed as a source of good in that way.

MC: I'd say I'm not an expert on that area, but I think one of the main things to consider would be that that technology would have to be tested on people who are not vulnerable. I think they're default with so much technology, like we have seen in Australia, is that it gets tested on the people that are in most need, and the people that have the least ability to fight back the system. So if we're going to test anything like that, we should test it on people who are able to defend themselves, to fight back – and I'm not saying that migrants and refugees are not able to do so. I'm just saying that before we implement it in situations of crisis, we need to make sure that it's applicable in other situations as well.

MG: Thank you. I think that's a useful point. And again, that question has been raised in the Slido as well about the implications of border tech in terms of documentation and identification. So, I think we've covered that off nicely. The next question we've got coming through here is, how useful is the Global North/Global South dichotomy for understanding and addressing the trends that we've been discussing today? I mean, it's arisen a lot, it's sort of the fundamental premise of the scenario. But is it still a useful dichotomy? In what ways is it or is it not? And is there something else that we should be shifting towards? You bring in the big questions. Thank you.

MC: I mean as someone who identifies from coming from the Global South, I think it's an extremely helpful dichotomy, pretty much because it highlights the history of relationships, of inequality we have had in the past, and we cannot deal with the future or even with the present unless we acknowledge that past. So, perhaps it's not the best description, but unless we face the reality of inequality, systemic racism, discrimination, colonialism, everything that actually impacts migration today, we can't move forward.

LE: I totally agree. And it makes me think about our wonderful opening keynote of the day, where we're reminded about a lot of the inequalities, and the problems we're currently facing are built on a colonial legacy. And so, I think as far as reminding us that we live in a kind of post- the start of colonialism, in terms of post-colonial environment, I think it makes sense to still think about the world as unequally divided, and the power dynamics still locking in the the hegemony of that colonial system.

MG: All right, question from the audience on this side.

[Audience] Thanks. Hi, I'm Linda Bartolomei from the Forced Migration Research Network picking up on the North-South divide. I was wondering, one of the key commitments in the Global Compact on Refugees, in addition to meaningful participation, is a focus on the role of local or host communities will have. So, I'm just wondering, in thinking about the fact that the vast majority of the world's displaced people internally, all refugees, are in countries of the Global South, what role do academics, civil society, civil society activists, local NGOs in the Global South have to play in this, along with refugee and displaced people's meaningfully participating? And what kind of role is there for solidarity between civil societies at that level in the Global South and Global North?

AK: I think that there is definitely a role. I think that alongside refugee communities, local civil society – which often could be refugee-led organisations as well – are going to be the ones responding, are going to be able to really highlight and showcase the work of, and the circumstances of, refugees and what their experience is. I think that local integration is about the host community really providing a way for refugees to live a fulfilling life, a meaningful life in that host country. So, it's going to take the various actors to support that and to do the advocacy work and ensure keep the governments of the Global South accountable for those rights that they are actually supposed to be protecting.

MC: I think also to add on what you were saying in terms of solidarity, that meaningful participation is not going to occur by miracle or in the vacuum, but we need to have a change in structures and things like funding, language, translation, funding for travelling. Like you cannot just expect that people that do not have the same resources, that do not speak the same languages, that do not have access to the same education system, will be able to engage in some of those forums unless we're able to make them more inclusive and provide the funding and the support to make them actually inclusive.

MG: Thank you, and thank you for the question focusing us back on what we can do today to assist with this. Yes, another question, down here – Natasha.

[Audience] Hi, thanks for a really interesting panel. I'm Natasha Yucoub from UNSW. And I've got a question about the scenario. If looking forward to the future where existing threats are likely to transcend borders with – whether it's environmental or political threats, with polarization, increasing polarization – could there be a shifting notion of durable solutions and of asylum, where those threats transcend borders? And then a related question. Sorry, can I ask a related question?

MG: Absolutely.

[Audience] What in the scenario – do you foresee the foresee in the scenario that there may not only be border shifting but a more radical change in notions of nation-state borders – that are anyway quite a modern and in many cases illegitimate construct – where then technology is pushing away from the nation-state, pushing us away from the nation-state system? It sort of relates to what a lot of people we're talking about with agency and, you know, power in the hand of tech companies, not necessarily nation-state, and so, it's building on what a number of speakers have talked about. Thanks.

MG: Thank you; Louis.

LE: Yeah. It's a really interesting question, or two questions, in relation to the first one, I hope so. It, you made me think of the sociologist Ulrich Beck. And he argued that cosmopolitanism in the end will be inevitable, because we'll either cooperate or perish. And so they are our options when it comes to facing climate change and the the real challenges we're facing as humanity. And so you would hope that these things do become a push for a cosmopolitan ethos, which is kind of what the opening keynote was asking for as well, where we break down the kind of traditional hegemony that's entrenched certain mindsets and excluded voices. And so cosmopolitanism will break that down. And in terms – and that sort of feeds into the discussion of our borders in a traditional sense, no longer [being] representative of what's going on. To some extent, I argue yes – I argue the notion of Westphalian sovereignty as a traditional construct that defines what's happening on an international level is not a super accurate thing anymore in terms of who has agency over bordering and who controls these processes. I don't think it's traditionally as it once was, but unfortunately I don't think that is moving in a cosmopolitan direction.

So, I'm not sure about the second one.

MG: All right. We might throw to a moment for Nik to offer his thoughts on those questions.

NT: Thanks, Natasha. Just a couple of reflections on your second question, around sort of shifting borders and shifting nations. Just two quick thoughts. The first is the absolutely crucial role of regional mobility systems in the future of protection. So, think about free-movement areas like ECOWAS and the extent to which that provides a cushioning, the means to move in safety and without the sorts of border technologies we've discussed here today. And not just, of course, in the interests of the regions themselves, but indeed in the interests of Global North States that associate on containing people within certain regions. The extent to which regional mobility systems can be developed and supported and enhanced in the coming decade will be crucial.

The second, in terms of the Westphalian authority, and it's extremely early years, I will be very brief, but I think there's a crucial role for sub-national authorities here. So, if you think about the role of municipalities in Europe, city councils, city governments, going in often precisely the opposite directions to the national counterparts and the extent to which that can balance the restrictive, control agenda against the more welcoming, protection agenda also be a key point, a key side of action in the coming decade.

MG: Thank you, Nik. Another question from the Slido. Are there ways in which tech could enhance the agency of displaced people and reduce or mitigate harms for people on the move?

LE: I mean, absolutely. Tech's become an essential technology for people on the move. The smartphone is a device that is, you know, ubiquitous with migrations – from people getting into whatever lounge it is, from people navigating very unsafe settings, and needing to contact advocates or other people to get information on basic stuff. So, yeah, there's authors who describe some enforced migration pathways, as, you know, ‘4G is as important as you know anything else these days’. So, yeah, tech, absolutely. And advocates as well, using drone technology to identify migrants in trouble, say, in the Mediterranean, and then contacting authorities and putting pressure on authorities to actually conduct rescues. So, a lot of the technology we've described as being used to enforce bodies borders, are also used to resist and to try and push in more humanitarian directions as well.

MG: The surveillance not just on the people on the move, but surveillance on what governments are doing.

LE: Absolutely. Some authors refer to it as well as surveillance from below. So, the smartphone has been an incredibly powerful technology for holding Australian authorities to a check in terms of, you know, footage coming out of detention centres and other things like that as well. So, yeah, surveilling the surveillance is a very important part of this discussion. Tech, border tech, like anything else, just becomes a new battleground. And that's what a border ultimately is. It's a contest. It's a a, description of who's in and who's out. And there's always going to be push and resistance for that. And technology is part of both sides of that story.

MG: [Magdalena] did you have additional comments on enhancing the agency of people on the move?

MC: Yes. One of the things we did a large research project across these 15 countries surveying and interviewing migrants, and one of the main things we find out is that people were not able to access assistance and protection because of the lack of information. They just didn't know where or how to access it. So, technology has a really important role to play in improving access, telling people where to find help, how to find it, overcoming language barriers and such. And I think mobile phone technologies are particularly important for that. We know people use Maps [app] to cross regions. At the same time, I think we need to be cautious that mobile phones are also now being co-opted to control and track migrants. And there's some, I guess dangerous precedents on some countries already where the phones are taken off migrants and used to track where they have moved in order to assess the protection claims. So, it's kind of both sides of the coin. On one side, of course migrants can use it, humanitarian organisations can use it, but there's also the risk there, or how that technology will be used against migrants and refugees.

MG: Adama, do you agree? Anything to add?

AK: No, I agree with everything that's being said. And I think that technology is such an important part of this process, in that you can see in often in conflict zones, internet and mobile-phone access is cut off because, again, there's that blackout, because I don't want information going out. But it's also about access as well; I mean, we talked about Global North-South divide, and it's about your ability to access – you know, a 4G mobile phone that gives you access to Internet, and if you don't have the resources to do that, that means actually, then, you don't have resources, you don't have access to information or connection. So, it's so important, but if you don't have access to it, then it just means you're a world away from everything else.

MG: Thank you. Well, we're sticking on the tech theme. We've got one last question from the audience before I throw back to the panelists for some concluding remarks. We can probably assume that not only migrants and refugees, but all of us will be increasingly subject to surveillance and the use of tech by governments. Might this change the way in which we think about the use of tech at the border?

LE: I think so. People aren't silly, they're savvy about this stuff. That's another thing the author David Lyon talks about. Although he says bordering tech becomes a global filtering of populations, he also says cultures of surveillance develop. So, for instance, with the migrants using mobile phones, there's some great papers written about the techniques used. So, for instance, not saving any contacts in their phone books because they know if an authority figure grabs their phone, that's going to try and find their contacts and then harass family members and do other things. So, there are all these strategies that people on the move have developed to try and use tech in a way that protects them from authority figures. And we all do that to some extent. Whether my wife only ever browses on the – what is it? the Google Chrome setting where you're – Incognito mode, that's what it is. Because she's like, I just want the algorithms know as least about me as possible, and she doesn't want the targeted ads. And so I think in the end, as cultures of surveillance develop, where we all start to acknowledge and respond to the way we're being digitally surveilled, we do develop methods and tools for trying to push back against them. We become more informed about it.

MC: Trying to be optimistic here, but maybe that if surveillance is coming for everyone, there will be a bit more solidarity with migrants and refugees and surveillance coming for them. And I think is often when you're in the position of the other that you're able to have that empathy, and maybe surveillance would be one of those opportunities. When we're all surveilled, we will realise how horrific it is for some of the most vulnerable.

MG: Thank you very much for the questions from the audience. We're going to do one more whip around to the panel to conclude what I think has been a challenging but very interesting discussion and engagement with the first scenario. So, for each panellist, I'd like to invite you to tell us one thing that needs to change in order to avoid the worst and amplify the best of this possible scenario. So, one thing that needs to change. And one thing that we need to understand better to prepare for the possible future, whether it be the scenario or something else. So, one thing to change and one thing to understand better, and Nik, I will throw to you first.

NT: Thanks colleagues. In terms of what needs to change, I mean, I think what we need clearly is a paradigm shift in how some States carry out externalization, from a focus on deterrence to the ability to provide controlled access to protection, using the technologies we discussed today. This could be humanitarian visas. It could be regional processing as Riona Moodley has worked on at the Kaldor Centre. It could be scaled-up resettlement and labour opportunities. It could be family reunification. I think, in keeping with the keynote earlier, this requires massive dynamic policy experimentation through the use of pilots and small-scale policy-transfer efforts. I think we're actually seeing this. We are today, in 2023, in a state of crisis with respect to territorial asylum in what we're calling the Global North. And I think we're seeing some creativity in the face of that crisis. I think, for example, of the emergence this year of safe mobility offices in the Americas providing humanitarian parole, family reunification, well before people reach the US southern border. So, that's what's to change.

In terms of understanding things better, I think going back to relations between States, we need to understand what forms of international cooperation work in this area, what can we live with and what provides results in terms of refugee protection at a sustainable level. So if you look at existing cooperation in your part of the world, but also in mine, cooperation is often ineffective. Agreements are struck and then soon abandoned or become non-functional in the case of the Turkey statement. So, what works in terms of mutual interests on the part of cooperating States that also meet the interests and respect the rights of asylum seekers and refugees?

MG: Thank you, Nik. Over to you Louis – one thing to change and one thing to understand better.

LE: So, obviously within the subject that I've been talking constantly about, bordering tech, the thing that needs to change is just a simple one: We just need to make sure that when we develop a new bordering system and you digitised bordering system, it needs to be better embedded within legislation. So, a quick example: In the EU, there's currently a suite of new systems being deployed at the moment, one is the ETIAS system – I forget the acronym, but essentially it's a visa waiver system. Australians will have to apply under the ETIAS system when they go to the EU and that does involve algorithmic risk assessment using machine-learning algorithms. But they have written into their legislation some key details, like what characteristics it will assess and what characteristics it can't assess, like race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality. And people argue that the algorithm will develop proxy coding to get around a blah blah blah. But anyway, it's a good starting point and it does give us insights into what's going on. In Australia, there's a single section of the Migration Act which says the minister has almost complete discretion to give any of their powers or responsibilities to a computational system, pretty much with no oversight. So we don't actually know what computational systems are being used, what they're doing, whether there's a human decision-maker involved after a computational output, there's pretty much – I mean, you can go trawlling through FOIs, and there's some regulations, but very little. And so when people complain about these systems creating opacity and black boxes and stuff, I don't actually think the tech's doing that. I think it's the way we're organising them. So, just embedding these things in legislation and making them more publicly visible is what needs to change.

And what we need to understand better is, we need to understand that these systems don't produce objective, neutral science; they produce particular perspectives on the world. And when we understand them with that cultural lens, we treat them differently. For instance, police in the Netherlands who regularly ignore their smart-camera system – the [inaudible] system, I think it is, off the top of my head – because I just don't really trust it and I think it's a bit silly a lot of the time. And so, just having that sort of take on these things changes how we interact with it.

MG: Thank you. Magdalena?

MC: I think one thing that needs to change – speaking as a migrant, as a humanitarian – is that we really need to do every effort to recognise again the humanity of migrants, including asylum seekers and refugees. I know it sounds really idealistic, it shouldn't, but it cannot be that difficult to recognise the basic dignity of people, irrespective of the legal status. It cannot be the most difficult thing in the world. I know it is, but it should not be.

And one thing that we need to understand better – and this, I think it's following from what Louis was saying – it's why there is so much hostility towards migrants in some countries and what can be done to prevent and to fix this. And I think, in doing this, we really need to talk to migrants, we need to talk to asylum seekers, we need to talk to refugees, we need to talk to researchers in the Global South as well. Like, so much of the discussion today was focused on this future on the Global North, but if we look at the present in the Global South, as Adama was saying, we're already hosting the largest groups of people, and there's some good practices coming up. For instance, in South America, massive displacement of Venezuelans; Colombia regularised over one million people. Argentina and Brazil opened temporary and permanent residence pathways to hundreds of thousands of people. And I'm not saying these solutions have no issues; I'm sure they have a lot of shortcomings. But they show us that there's a multiplicity of responses, a multiplicity of futures, that do not rely on containing people and in curbing or in hindering the safety, the well-being and dignity of migrants.

MG: Thank you very much. Adama?

AK: So, in terms of what needs to change, I really find it hard to get past the end of asylum, but I will for the purpose of the scenario. I think it's the role of the other durable solutions in this scenario, because we've talked about resettlement as the only one, but I think there's two others: voluntary return or local integration. How does that play out in this scenario? I think that's the thing, because resettlement is only a portion of the picture. So, I think that needs to change in terms of the solution.

And what we need to understand, I agree with Magdalena, it's what are the wishes of people who are in need of protection themselves? What do they want? What if resettlement, like I said earlier, may not be the actual answer? And that will then form what the response is.

MG: Thank you. Well, there are many things that we may not be able to change over the next 10 years, but one thing that we absolutely can change is the systems that allow us to listen to the people who are most affected by these policies to the people on the move. That's something that many of us in this room are already taking steps to do better, but there is much more that can be done. So, let's hope in 2033 that is no longer still on the To Do List.

Please join me in thanking our panelists today, and thank you to all of you who engaged with this first scenario. We hope as the next two come through, the process becomes more familiar and we encourage you to keep casting your eyes to the future over lunch, which will now be served out in the foyer. And our next panel will explore the question of how we will identify people in need of protection and will commence promptly at 12:50 PM. Thank you.