Life and Death at the Digitalized Border: 'Access Denied'

This contribution addresses the transnational interconnections of racialized violence unfolding on and around the border zones studied in the Deathscapes project: in light of (1) governments’ responses to the suffering of the thousands perishing on the doorsteps of the United Kingdom and European Union and (2) the cyberspatial dimensions to border enforcement and related practices of surveillance and cybersecurity measures. Reconsidering Foucault’s thought on the push-and-pull dynamics that drive modern statecraft, I argue that these dynamics are integral to the public-private partnerships of contemporary statecraft are developing digital networked technologies in order not only to identify, deter and confine “unwanted populations” but also to achieve similar goals with citizenries. The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown these practices into relief, further entrenching once exceptional forms of “track and trace” operations. So-called Digital Transformation agendas undergird these patterns of extraterritorial and extra-terrestrial population control as revisualization technologies and forms of automation corral and categorize populations along what are unapologetically racialized lines. The chapter considers where openings for (digital) resistance lie in the face of these shifting constellations of local-global power and control at the online–offline nexus of life and death in the twenty-first century.